Engaging Cornell students to study adolescent sexual health in the digital age

Janis Whitlock and Jane Powers

BCTR researchers Janis Whitlock (director, Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery) and Jane Powers (director, ACT for Youth) have joined forces to study how technology impacts teen sexual behavior. Their project Adolescent Sexual Health in the Digital Age explores youth and “technology-mediated sexual activity” (TMSA): how young people engage in sexually explicit activities through digital technologies, such as online pornography, sexting, and hook up apps. The work is supported by a recently-awarded Hatch grant.

As a starting point, Whitlock and Powers surveyed youth service providers, sex educators, and parents to assess their overall level of awareness and concern about TMSA, and to capture what these individuals have been observing among the youth with whom they interact.

To learn directly from young people themselves, the researchers enlisted the help of undergraduates. In collaboration with Professor Kelly Musick and students in her Research Design, Practice and Policy class (PAM 3120) Whitlock and Powers launched a semester-long project to develop a survey that could be used to explore TMSA among college students. Class members first participated in focus groups led by members of the ACT for Youth evaluation team, research assistants in the Cornell Research Program on Self-Injury and Recovery lab, and Callie Silver (HD ’16), a Cooperative Extension intern and core research assistant for the project. The focus groups prompted students to discuss how they think their peers navigate sex in this new digital landscape. The students then learned how to code the focus group transcripts and generate themes to develop a college survey. Once the survey was developed, students conducted a pilot study, generating approximately 400 responses. Finally, the class presented their findings as well as their recommendations for revisions to the survey.

In this mutually rewarding project, students learned about research methods through a real- world project, and in turn their work provided BCTR researchers with essential information that will be incorporated into an NIH proposal to further examine this understudied, but important, topic.

New systematic translational review on teen pregnancy prevention programs

The newest systematic translational review (STR) from the  BCTR Research Synthesis Project considers the question, "Do teen pregnancy prevention programs that include education for the teenagers’ parents show positive results?" A review of evaluations of existing evidence-based programs found that there could be benefits that varied from program to program. Full findings can be found in Parent Education for Teen Pregnancy Prevention.

STRs are the result of a new research synthesis protocol designed to include practitioner input in the review process while maintaining the structure of a systematic review and speed of a rapid review. The method was developed by Research Synthesis Project director Mary Maley to improve the accessibility and use of research evidence by community practitioners and policy makers. Review topics focus on applied practice questions which require a synopsis of evidence to use in order to strengthen program implementation. More about the STR process can be found here.

Previously pr0duced STRs:

Community Engagement in Practice

Psycho-Social Evaluation Measures for 8-12 year-olds in Nutrition Education Programs

ACT for Youth supports sex education and positive youth development at Provider Day

Attendees at Provider Day
Photo by Brian Maley

This September, the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence (COE) sponsored Provider Day 2014, a professional development conference for 224 teen pregnancy prevention program staff from communities across New York State. The COE provides technical assistance, training, and evaluation for three pregnancy prevention initiatives funded by the New York State Department of Health. Sex educators and youth service professionals from each initiative came together in Albany to share and gain new insights, strategies, and tools to promote healthy development among youth.

The evening before Provider Day, the BCTR hosted a reception that set a warm and collegial tone. Jane Powers and John Eckenrode opened the day’s events, and BCTR staff offered workshops on a range of topics, including Self-Care and Youth Work (Heather Wynkoop Beach and Michele Luc), Youth with Mental Health Concerns (Jutta Dotterweich), Using Evaluation Data (Mary Maley and Amanda Purington), and Life Purpose and Teens (Janis Whitlock), among others.

One participant wrote,

I found the day valuable and validating. I believe we need all the validation we can get when working in this field. It's not easy, and when we can recharge and gain new knowledge and tools, I know that I come back to the office looking for ways to use the information I have gotten. Thank you!

Talks at Twelve: Ravhee Bholah, Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Promoting Sexual Health Including HIV and AIDS Education in School-based Programs though Community Partnerships
Ravee Bholah, School of Science and Mathematics, Mauritius Institute of Education

Tuesday, December 16, 2014
12:00PM-1:00PM
Beebe Hall, 2nd floor conference room

This talk is open to all. Lunch will be served. Metered parking is available in the Plantations lot across the road from Beebe Hall.

In his talk, Ravhee Bholah will discuss findings related to policy and community partnerships that support sexual health education programs at selected New York State schools. He will share insights on institutional capacities that exist within schools to support these programs. Challenges experienced by schools and officials in the coordination and implementation of such programs, and models used in the training of educators on sexual health will be also addressed.

Ravhee Bholah, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Science and Mathematics at the Mauritius Institute of Education in Mauritius. He has been coordinator of (1) sexuality education and (2) education for sustainable development (ESD) at this institute and has leading roles in curriculum development on sexual health, HIV prevention, and ESD including climate change education in the Republic of Mauritius. Ravhee is currently a visiting Fulbright Scholar in the BCTR.

Visiting fellow Ravhee Bholah joins the center this semester

Ravhee Bholah, an associate professor at the Mauritius Institute of Education, received a Fulbright Scholarship to study policy and community partnerships that promote adolescent sexual health, with a particular focus on school-based programs. He plays leading roles in curriculum development on sexual health, HIV prevention, and education for sustainable development in the Republic of Mauritius. Ravhee works closely with the United Nations Development Programme, UNESCO, the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development, and the Southern African Development Community Regional Environmental Education Programme on regional programs addressing these issues. He has been a member of various committees at national and regional levels. For instance, he has been the chairperson of Network of African Science Academies Expert Group Committee since 2012 and a member of the South African Development Community Education for Sustainable Development Research Network since 2008. At national level in Mauritius, he is a member of steering committees at the Ministry of Education and Human Resources for the following: (1) Sexuality Education, (2) Health and (3) Climate Change Adaptation. He is a board member of the National Ramsar Committee in Mauritius. He has also done considerable work on climate change education. Ravhee will be working in the BCTR as a visiting fellow through the end of December.

He will be mentored by Jennifer Tiffany during his time at Cornell, and he will be working very closely with the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence.

Ravhee is joined his wife Rouma and their three sons, Divyesh, Sudhakar, and Prabhakar, ages 10, 12, and 15, respectively.

ACT for Youth at HHS Conference

Jane Powers, Jutta Dotterweich, and Amanda Purington

Jane Powers, Jutta Dotterweich, and Amanda Purington of the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence were presenters at the 2014 U.S. Health and Human Services Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference in Washington, DC this June. The conference brought together federally funded prevention programs to enhance understanding of best practices, programs, and strategies, particularly on the theme of “Bridging the Gaps: Eliminating Disparities in Teen Pregnancy and Sexual Health.”

Conference participants offer evidence-based programs in their communities in order to support youth in improving sexual health (e.g., delaying sexual activity and using condoms and effective contraception when they do become sexually active). These programs are not new, but to ensure positive results funders are now strongly emphasizing fidelity to program design as well as implementation quality. Recognizing that many participants struggle to collect and use data effectively, Powers and Purington offered tools to track attendance, monitor fidelity, and assess quality, as well as strategies to help facilitators use data to improve program implementation. They also shared lessons learned in New York State’s efforts to scale up evidence-based programs.

Dotterweich and Powers focused on building organizational capacity for evidence-based programming. They introduced participants to resources intended to enhance facilitator competencies, as well as an online training on implementing evidence-based programs in adolescent sexual health that was recently developed by ACT for Youth.

Jane Powers is project director for the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence, where Jutta Dotterweich is director of Training and Technical Assistance and Amanda Purington is director of Evaluation and Research. The Center of Excellence supports the New York State Department of Health in its efforts to promote adolescent sexual health.

ACT focus group studies connect policy makers with youth voices

Since its inception in 2000, the ACT for Youth Center of Excellence (COE) has sought to enhance efforts to promote the health and well-being of adolescents. As an intermediary funded by the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH), the COE aims to connect research to practice by applying knowledge about what works in prevention and youth development in communities across the state. But the sharing of information is not a one-way street: the COE also collects wisdom and data from the field, which in turn is used to inform policy and practice.

One illustration of this process is the COE's recent youth focus group study. The COE has often been called upon by the NYSDOH to conduct focus groups on topics of interest in adolescent health, specifically so policy makers and decision makers can hear directly from youth in New York State (NYS). The focus group findings have been incorporated into funding announcements and media campaigns, and used to develop new sexual health initiatives. Recently, the COE partnered with grantees who are working in the field of teen pregnancy prevention to conduct focus groups with youth in order to understand how adolescents think about “family planning,” as well as identify barriers to their accessing reproductive health services. This study was driven by the fact that while significant numbers of adolescents are sexually active, there has been a decline in adolescent use of publicly-funded family planning services, a fact that has been observed nationally as well as in NYS. Major findings from this focus group study support those documented in national studies:

1. teens want to prevent pregnancy, but they have misconceptions about and negative views of birth control methods; and
2. utilization of family planning services can be improved by attending to several factors including teen perceptions of stigma, discomfort, and lack of privacy.

These findings are outlined in a recent COE publication, Youth and Family Planning: Findings from a Focus Group Study, which is part of the Research fACTs and Findings series. In addition, the COE has also presented findings to practitioners who work in the area of teen pregnancy prevention, adolescent sexual health, and reproductive health services. By connecting these results directly with those working in the field, the COE is able to reach a wide audience of practitioners, policy makers, and educators who can use the information to inform practice.

Evaluating programs to promote teen sexual health

"Teenagers and young adults represent only 25 percent of the sexually active population in the U.S., but they acquire nearly half of all new sexually transmitted infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In addition, about 3 in 10 girls in the U.S. become pregnant before age 20. Clearly, encouraging the sexual health of young people is an important public health priority. But what’s the best way to go about it?"

Read more at the Evidence-Based Living blog:

Evaluating programs to promote teen sexual health

Talks at Twelve: Ann Meier, Friday, August 24, 2012

Significant Others, Sex Norms, and Adolescent Well-Being
Ann Meier, Sociology, University of Minnesota

Friday, August 24, 2012
12:00pm
Beebe Hall - 2nd floor conference room

Using data from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Ann Meier and colleagues Eric Grodsky and Bill McCarthy investigate the microlevel origins of adolescent sex norms. They focus on stated norms (attitudes), as well as enacted norms (behaviors) and the influence of people from four primary groups: parents, friends, classmates, and schoolmates. Dr. Meier will talk about how these four groups vary in their levels of attachment, social proximity, and exposure to adolescents. Their findings reveal that parents, friends, and schoolmates make distinctive contributions to adolescent sex norm development, whereas classmates tend not to have unique influence. In almost all cases, schoolmates’ contributions to adolescents’ sex norms are at least twice the size of those of friends and classmates. Further, parental influence is consistently and significantly associated with both stated and enacted norms. Overall, they find that the attitudes and the actions of those with whom adolescents are close to, as well as those who are more distant contribute to teenagers’ views about sexual intercourse and their decisions to have sex. It is these normative contexts, they suggest, that shape the effects of sex on adolescent well-being.

Ann Meier is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and an affiliate of the Minnesota Population Center. Her work on adolescent romantic and sexual relationships has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, and the Sociological Quarterly among other journals. This work was funded by a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) on Social Development into Adulthood and with an ongoing research grant (R01) on Adolescent Sex, Well-Being, and Normative Contexts. In addition, current collaborative work with Kelly Musick (Cornell) on family environments and adolescent well-being appears in Social Science Research, Journal of Marriage and Family, and in the edited volume Early Adulthood in a Family Context (Springer). Finally, Meier’s work on gender and sexuality differences in adolescent and young adults’ relationship values appears in Journal of Marriage and Family and Contexts.

Lunch will be served. This talk is open to all.

Co-sponsored by the Cornell Population Center.

Complementary Strengths findings presented at World AIDS Conference

Jennifer Tiffany presented results from the Complementary Strengths Research Partnership at the 19th World AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 as part of a panel on Young People, HIV, and Sexual and Reproductive Health Services.

The paper, co-authored with John Eckenrode, Deinera Exner-Cortens, and Sara Birnel-Henderson and titled Active Program Participation and HIV Risk Reduction among Urban Youth, highlighted the new measure of youth program participation generated by the study; significant positive associations among program participation, social connectedness, and HIV risk reduction scores; possible impacts of average setting-level participation scores on individual youth risk reduction practices; and connections between longer program involvement increased impact of youth participation on risk reduction practices.

The panel was chaired by two youth HIV activists:

Cristina Jade Peña
Story on Cristina
Video on Cristina

Pablo Torres Aguilera
Story on Pablo
Video on Pablo

Other papers on the panel addressed community development programs and anti-retroviral therapy for youth in Zimbabwe, national adolescent HIV prevention strategies in 20 countries with high HIV prevalence rates, and strategies to make programs focused on pregnancy prevention and HIV risk reduction work in tandem.

The Complementary Strengths Research Project is supported in part by award #R21NR009764 from the NIH/National Institute of Nursing Research and by USDA grant #NYC-323442-0219950. The content of the report is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Nursing Research, the National Institutes of Health, or the USDA.