Supporting Sexual Health Education by CBO-based Youth Development Professionals

说明（由申请人提供）：意义。在美国，青少年中性传播感染（STI）和意外怀孕的比例过高，这表明继续需要以证据为基础的性教育。通过传统教育场所，主要是学校，努力解决性健康问题，在解决这一棘手问题方面发挥了重要作用；然而，在目前对性健康的了解、目前的流行病学结果和目标目标之间仍存在很大差距。其他新出现的场所似乎提供了增加提供准确和适当的性健康信息和教育活动的机会。除了传统的教育提供者之外，社区组织已被确定为具有促进青少年性健康的巨大潜力的场所。在社区组织内，青年发展专业人员（YDP）是青少年性教育的重要来源；然而，最近的研究表明，需要为青年发展计划提供系统的培训和可利用的资源，并表明青年发展计划本身希望得到持续的教育和支持。以cbo为基础的青年发展计划被要求进行反应性健康教育，以回答问题。他们还经常参加主动开展工作的讲习班和外联活动。此外，他们和他们的组织在这样做方面几乎没有得到支持。创新。为了解决以cbo为基础的YDP提供的独特机会，我们建议扩展由我们团队成员进行的新兴研究，通过研究以cbo为基础的YDP在性健康教育、咨询和支持方面的作用。根据这些研究工作的结果，我们将开发和验证一个CBO实施工具包：一套广泛的资源，以加强CBO在主动和被动性健康教育和咨询方面的有效实施。该工具包将解决从组织准备到青年发展计划教育，再到提供给社区预算客户和客户家长的材料和资源等问题。虽然这项工作将利用创新的媒体和技术，包括多媒体、互动性、社交网络和智能手机兼容的交付，但重点和创新是具体的健康问题和解决这一问题的整体、教育和行为健全、综合的方法，并将技术作为工具，扩大采用和实施，使CBO、青少年发展计划及其客户能够使用这些技术。以及支持目标结果的地方。第一阶段将采用基于社区的参与性研究方法，从广泛的组织中抽取全国青年发展规划样本，扩展目前的青年发展规划研究，设计总体的青年发展规划工具包，开发这些教育和支助工具的子集，并在单一主题可用性会议和研讨会中对这些材料进行形成性测试

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Significance. In the United States, disproportionately high rates of sexually transmitted infection (STI) and unplanned pregnancy among adolescents suggest the continuing need for evidence-based sexuality education. Efforts to address sexual health through traditional educational venues, principally schools, play an important role in targeting this recalcitrant problem; however, there remains a substantial gap between current sexual health understanding, current epidemiological outcomes, and targeted objectives. Other emerging venues appear to offer an opportunity to increase delivery of accurate and appropriate sexual health information and educational activities. Moving beyond traditional educational providers, community-based organizations (CBOs) have been identified as venues with significant potential to promote adolescent sexual health. Within CBOs, youth development professionals (YDP) are important sources of sexuality education for adolescents; however, recent research documents a need for systematic training and accessible resources for YDP and indicates that the YDP themselves desire ongoing education and support. CBO-based YDP are called upon to conduct reactive sexual health education-to respond to questions. They also frequently participate in proactive efforts-conducting workshops and outreach. Moreover, they, and their organizations, have little support in doing so. Innovation. To address the unique opportunity afforded by CBO-based YDP, we propose to extend emerging research, conducted by members of our team, by examining roles CBO-based YDP play in sexual health education, counseling, and support. Based on the results of those research efforts, we will develop and validate a CBO implementation toolkit: a wide ranging set of resources to enhance effective CBO implementation of proactive and reactive sexual health education and counseling. The toolkit will address issues from organizational readiness to YDP education to materials and resources for provision to CBO clients and client- parents. Although the effort will make use of innovative media and technologies-including multimedia, interactivity, social networking, and smart phone compatible delivery-the emphasis, and innovation, is the specific health problem and the holistic, educationally and behaviorally sound, integrated, approach to this problem, with technologies as tools to augment adoption and implementation to the extent that the technologies are accessible by CBO's, the YDPs, and their clients, and where supportive of targeted outcomes. Phase I will extend current YDP research by using community-based participatory research methods with a national sample of YDP from a broad range of organizations, design the overall CBO toolkit, develop a subset of these educational and support tools, and test those materials formatively within single-subject usability sessions and in a summative field trial. Phase II will develop the entire suite of materials and conduct a large- scale trial to validate them prior to widespread dissemination. Our proposed effort will: Specific Aim 1. Improve upon what is known about the role of YDP as sexual health educators by examining their information and skills needs, their understanding of evidence-based sexual health for adolescents, and the sexual health program/intervention needs of their organizations (CBOs). Specific Aim 2. Improve sexual health efforts of CBO-based YDP by developing resources to address: a. Reactive Education: Increase YDP efficacy for evidence-based responses to sexual health questions and increase YDP capacity to use behavioral change messages and interventions. b. Proactive Education: Increase frequency, accuracy, and effectiveness of outreach and educational efforts by YDP; increase YDP awareness of selves as sexual health models. c. Organizational Adoption: Enable CBOs, as organizations, to assess readiness, to assess effectiveness, and to develop a systematic approach to providing evidence-based sexual health programming. The proposed research effort will be an important contribution to the understanding of CBO-based YDP sexual health educational efforts and will also lead to the development and validation of innovative educational and performance support tools in an area where none currently exist.