Abstract
Adolescent pregnancy is considered a priority public health issue because of its implications in the lives of young mothers, their children, and the well-being of the general population. In this paper, we describe an intervention targeting adolescents (aged 11–19 years old) in a rural context and estimate its impact on key outcomes relevant to early pregnancy prevention: knowledge and self-efficacy concerning sexual and reproductive health, knowledge of sexual and reproductive rights, and attitudes toward gender roles. Our study used a quasi-experimental design comprising 747 adolescents. Three difference-in-differences models (raw, adjusted, and by exposure level) with fixed effects estimated the changes in all outcome measures. Our results showed that the intervention community had a significant improvement in all outcomes, and this improvement was larger in those who received the highest-exposure level of intervention compared to a control community. Our study provides evidence that a community-based intervention, founded on comprehensive sexual education, is a promising approach to improve key outcomes related to early pregnancy in rural contexts. Further research should be undertaken to test how similar strategies focusing on multi-layer early pregnancy determinants work on other sub-groups of vulnerable adolescents, such as school dropouts or those living in disadvantaged circumstances.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by CONACYT (SALUD-2014-1-233690) and Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (Anexo -13-E022-630). The authors wish to thank Christine Laurin for editing the English text.
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Campero, L., Cruz-Jiménez, L., Estrada, F. et al. “I Matter, I Learn, I Decide”: An Impact Evaluation on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Rights to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy. J Primary Prevent 42, 343–361 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10935-020-00609-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10935-020-00609-w
Keywords
- Adolescent pregnancy
- Program evaluation
- Knowledge
- Self-efficacy
- Gender roles
- Reproductive rights