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“I Don’t Like Being Stereotyped, I Decided I Was Never Going Back to the Doctor”: Sexual Healthcare Access Among Young Latina Women in Alabama

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Abstract

Young Latina women (YLW) in the US and in Alabama are disproportionately affected by sexual health disparities. Our community based participatory research (CBPR) study’s purpose was to examine YLW’s perceptions and experiences of sexual healthcare access (SHCA) toward developing community-driven, multilevel intervention strategies. We conducted 20 semi-structured qualitative interviews with YLW between 15 and 19 years old and who had been in the US for 5 or more years. We content-analyzed the data guided by the Socioecological Model of Sexual Health (SEMSH). We began analyses by coding independently, built consensus on the codes, then finished coding transcripts independently. Sixty-five percent of participants were US-born and 60% had health insurance. Participants identified barriers/facilitators to SHCA including discrimination in clinical settings and embarrassment/stigma about SHCA. Our study is the first in AL to use CBPR to work with YLW. Interventions should consider the multi-level and intersectional nature of SHCA challenges.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our study participants and the members of our Community Advisory Board for generously lending their time and insights to this study.

Funding

Research reported in this manuscript was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number UL1TR001417.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Medicine and Population Health, The University of Alabama, Box 870326, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    Mercedes M. Morales-Alemán

  2. Institute for Rural Health Research, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA

    Mercedes M. Morales-Alemán & Gwendolyn Ferreti

  3. Division of Preventive Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

    Isabel C. Scarinci

Authors
  1. Mercedes M. Morales-Alemán
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  2. Gwendolyn Ferreti
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  3. Isabel C. Scarinci
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Correspondence to Mercedes M. Morales-Alemán.

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Morales-Alemán, M.M., Ferreti, G. & Scarinci, I.C. “I Don’t Like Being Stereotyped, I Decided I Was Never Going Back to the Doctor”: Sexual Healthcare Access Among Young Latina Women in Alabama. J Immigrant Minority Health 22, 645–652 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-019-00932-3

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