Teenage Pregnancy in Latino Communities, Essay Example

Abstract

Teenage pregnancy has been identified as a public health issue that has not only led to consequent health issues but also leading to school dropouts and poor academic performance. This has been identified by the CDC as mainly involving 15% percent of teenagers between the age of 15 to 19 years of age. This is the basis for setting up an intervention program that will involve Clarksville High School directors, teachers, social workers, parents, and the teenagers themselves. Through an initial assessment and awareness creation, needs assessment of the teenagers at Clarksville High School will be evaluated for their different perceptions and education on sex through a culturally sensitive approach. Through the targeted culturally sensitive approach in the intervention program, the process will involve establishing rapport with societal stakeholders such as the parents who can take part in the sex education of their children. The intervention program will then involve qualitative and quantitative approaches in evaluating the outcome of the process used in engaging the teenagers at Clarksville. Therefore, the mixed method will be able to evaluate an example of a standardized group of questions aimed at assessing the changed perceptions of the teenagers on matters of sex and consequences of sex such as the associated diseases. This is the essence of the process evaluation in ensuring future surveys are carried out in a better approach to ensure the goals of the intervention program will be achieved. This will be with consideration of the different problems that were encountered in carrying out the Clarksville program.

Introduction

According to Cense and Ruard Ganzevoort (2019), teenage pregnancy in Clarksville can be denoted as its societal problem, especially linked to a significant rate of school dropouts due to teen pregnancy. Teenage pregnancy is a social problem that has also been recognized by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the organization, a certain age group of teenagers in Clarksville can fit the definition of teenage pregnancy as a social and public health issue. The CDC mainly outlines teenagers between the age of 15 to 19 years old to be highly predisposed to the social issue (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). The organization also outlines the impact of teenage pregnancy as a social issue due to consequences such as causing increased school dropouts among girls. Even if teenage mothers continue with their education, most are associated with lower school achievement. Teenage pregnancy worsens the health situation and later predisposes to unemployment during adulthood, which is just but part of the negative issues associated with this social problem.

The above reasons were the subject of an intervention program at Clarksville High School. According to the Laureate Education (2012c) statistics, the 15% dropout rate of pregnant teenage students was the major concern for the set program. Through the set social program targeted at engaging parents and their support on the issue of pregnancy prevention, a program will use the theory of empowerment, in the form of knowledge, to facilitate the pregnancy prevention program’s goals (Kan & Ramirez, 2020). Therefore, the social program in Clarksville will aim at engaging all parties going to Clarksville High School, including both teenage mothers and those who are actively involved in sexual activities.

Just like the already existing programs in Clarksville, the proposed program will also involve process evaluation to monitor the impact of the program on teenagers. According to Huys et al. (2019), the role of process evaluation, especially for this program that involves an academic institution, is to ensure continued supervision, evaluation, and the practicability of the process among teenagers. Therefore, the program will involve both engaging the student community of the high school and an in-home multidisciplinary approach in the form of engaging all concerned parties in the lives of teenagers. By involving the social and public health learning approach in tackling the teen pregnancy issue at Clarksville, the involved population will be able to gain adequate information and environmentally sensitive approaches targeted at the different teenagers exposed to different perceptions of sex and sexual activities (Greenberg et al., 2017). Therefore, the set service and program have a substantial targeted principle through which the teenagers will be approached.

The essence of involving such a diversity of parties in the lives of the teenagers in Clarksville High School will be coupled with engaging different culturally diverse parties with different principles and beliefs. This calls for the proposed program intervention in ensuring adequate cooperation with the various clientele with different pre-existing environmental hurdles (Grinnell et al., 2015). According to Leung et al. (2019), the program intervention at Clarksville will be right to involve a culturally sensitive approach while engaging the different teenagers and their parents in matters of sex education. Sex education in an in-home program intervention for teenage pregnancy will involve the use of relevant cultural contexts and environments that will help drive the targeted impact. Therefore, the rest of this essay will evaluate how the program intervention and process evaluation, with features such as culturally sensitive engagement of subjects, will attain the sensitization and creation of awareness on teenage pregnancy among teenagers.

Needs Assessment

The main social and public health issue in Clarksville City is teen pregnancy and related impact. Consequences such as increased rates of school dropout and related health consequences of procedures such as abortion and delivery have been identified as the main issues of teen pregnancy (Bogan et al., 2020). Also, the school lacks school programs for student mentorship, and it appears that parents lack involvement in the educational needs of their children at Clarksville High School (Laureate Education, 2012c). Therefore, in addition to the teenagers themselves, other subjects such as the teachers, social workers, counselors, and parents seem to be missing in the lives of these teenagers. Although the female gender is the primary subject of the consequences of pregnancy, some cultures in Clarksville were identified to involve the father of the child in taking immediate responsibilities for the pregnancy (Aparicio et al., 2016). This outlines how different parties are eventually affected by teen pregnancies and their consequences.

As already established, Laureate Education (2012c) statistics show how teen pregnancy was associated with at least a 15% dropout rate in Clarksville. Also, apart from being a social issue that affects different social structures such as early parenting and school dropouts, teen pregnancy has been associated with subjecting the female teenager to health risk, hence becoming a public health concern (Danawi et al., 2016). This has mainly remained a social and public health issue due to the growing disparities in different cultures that continue to flock to cities such as Clarksville. Therefore, gathering further information on Clarksville High School will help one understand the different growing community perceptions on sex education, political disagreements, and any other problems that may later surface. It has coincidentally been associated with diversity and poverty in urban areas (Susanto & Rahmawati, 2016), hence making the existing programs in curbing teenage pregnancy difficult to attain united beliefs and perspectives on sex and teen pregnancy.

The need to address teen pregnancy on the primary parties such as educating teenagers on sex, developing the youths, and engaging vulnerable youths is a question on who should do it (Feldman Farb & Margolis, 2016). For example, the question of whether parents at Clarksville should involve their children in sex talk is a concern in the program. Also, instead of engaging teenage mothers only, the program will evaluate the efficacy of the intervention for both male and female teenagers. The program intervention, therefore, will also include new parties such as the parents at home and the teachers at school. In addition to the teen female students, the program will involve the males in the process, as the overall goal is to eliminate teen pregnancy and its related sequelae.

By determining what issues are affecting the teenagers of Clarksville High School, the intervention program will have targeted to address the issues of sex and sexual activities among the teenagers. The program intervention will involve educating the teenagers about sex education, possible consequences, and the right ways of carrying the activities. Through engaging the parents, different cultural-based approaches will be involved in how best teenage parents can be supported and the role of the males and their parents in ensuring teenage pregnancy is avoided. Also, the use of the initial assessment of the needs of Clarksville and teen pregnancy will help in the involvement of stakeholders such as school administrators, the Clarksville Board of Education, school guidance counselors, and school social workers.  Therefore, through the involvement of a wide range of parties, apart from the female teenagers only, different risk factors to teenage sex and the consequent teenage pregnancy will have been curbed.

Logic Model

The logic behind the proposed program intervention is the role of culture and environment in controlling teen pregnancy. According to this logic, the program and service will target to influence accepted sex education and pregnancy prevention by ensuring the stakeholders of culture, the parents and teachers, are involved in the creation of awareness. By aligning the knowledge of sex, and teen pregnancy at Clarksville City, health problems, incarceration, and joblessness during the lives of teen mothers will be avoided. The logic applied will select a goal to determine the behaviors affecting the teenagers and identify the determents affecting the behaviors. Such an approach will help identify interventions affecting the determinants, such as the targeted cultural intervention in engaging the teenagers and parents. According to Ni et al. (2021), the use of culturally sensitive interventions to engage the parents and teenagers of Clarksville will be associated with the acceptance of the intervention, hence helping to achieve the goal of the program.

The proposed program will be based on the BDI model, which assumes Clarksville High School students’ behavior, will largely determine health goals, and several determinants will influence the targeted behaviors and intervention goals of the program. Some of the targeted impact to be evaluated by the service at Clarksville City is how much mentorship the teenagers are receiving from school and at home, and how much sex talk the teenagers are having with the parents. Also, the outcome that will be evaluated will include how much support the teenage mothers are receiving from both parents and the fathers of the children and the involvement of stakeholders such as social workers.

The basis for the cultural intervention in providing the proposed service is the fact that communities are properly engaged when solutions are relevant to their existing beliefs. According to Ni et al. (2021), the use of culturally sensitive public health programs in cities, which are made up of different cultures, is the basis for establishing public relations. The logic of the BDI model in the proposed service will be able to provide contextual knowledge for the parents, teachers, social workers, and teenagers, hence enhancing the acceptability of the program. Through acceptability, the impact of the program in the form of increased teen mothers’ enrolment in the high school and continuation of their education will be evaluated. Therefore, the logic behind cultural sensitivity in engaging Clarksville High School is to ensure rapport is established, thus influencing the acceptability of the program and hence its targeted goals.

The logic of cultural sensitivity can also be used in any other research apart from that of Clarksville. Researchers who want to use this logic will ensure they gain basic knowledge of the subjects and their cultures to make use of acceptable methods, approaches, and techniques in engaging the targeted sample community. For example, a researcher may wish to know the cultural beliefs of people from South-East Asia concerning religion before engaging them in a study on the role of religious food on health. Therefore, the logic in the proposed program intervention and process evaluation in Clarksville High School concerning teenage pregnancy will influence acceptable behaviors through contextually engaging the subjects. This logic will ensure the program intervention is relevant to the different teenagers, parents, and teachers of Clarksville City.

Process Evaluation

The proposed program intervention will involve the primary subjects of the social and public health issue, the teenagers. According to Fuller et al. (2018), there are social determinants such as poverty, social media, and peer pressure that target teenagers into sex and sexual activity, which eventually leads to teen pregnancy. The teenagers for the program intervention will involve both the male and females and those who are already parents and those who are not. The other targeted group of subjects for the updated proposed program intervention is the parents, which are the primary stakeholders of the cultural values and conduct concerning sex and sexual activities. The teachers of Clarksville High School are the other subjects the updated program intervention will engage in ensuring control of teenage pregnancy is attained. Teachers usually spend most of the day with the teenagers at school (Worker et al., 2019); hence, they can shape the values and quality of life this age group will acquire.

The updated program intervention in Clarksville High School will experience problems in the process, such as the efficacy and timing of the subjects mentioned. The challenges with the process involve the issue of finding the appropriate time for engaging the teenagers on matters of sex and abstinence. As identified in the existing program, it is difficult to get the right time for involving teenagers of the high school inappropriately scheduled meetings. Also, the parents are difficult to engage as they have different working schedules and timing. It is the same with the teachers at Clarksville who were identified with different assignments after school hours. In addition to the scheduling challenges of the program, resource issues such as adequate materials for conducting the mass education exercise in the school will also be an issue. Resource challenges will include the program’s human, funding, and material resources. Others are issues such as inadequate social workers to conduct the program and inadequate funding to provide needed materials for the process of the program and evaluation.  These are some of the challenges that will arise with the updated program in Clarksville.

The data that will mainly be targeted from Clarksville will involve finding out the varied cultural make-up of the city and the process evaluation survey of the high school after the initial engagement with the subjects. The cultural profile of the city will be found in sources of data such as the City Library, which has detailed information and surveys on the different people living in the region. This information will also be found in recent census and medical surveys of the city. On the other hand, the process evaluation of the updated program after initial engagement of the teenagers, parents, and teachers will involve survey questions from the different subjects as sources of information for the program.

The updated program will, therefore, be run with the knowledge of existing issues to its process. Through a set process evaluation, after engaging the subjects, the program will be able to identify opportunities and maximize them. The financial challenges will be managed by the stakeholders of the updated program intervention at Clarksville High School by recommending and allowing voluntary funding for the program before it kick-starts. Also, the timing issues with the program will be managed through active collaboration between the social work program and the academic institution. Through such collaborations, the issue of materials for the program can also be curbed.

Outcome Evaluation

The outcome evaluation for the updated program intervention for teenage pregnancy as a social and public health issue is the basis for the process evaluation. Through survey questionnaires, social workers engaging the subjects will be able to evaluate their knowledge on sex education, abstinence, social support, and the issues of parenting and the role of society in teen pregnancy. This will be after an initial month of community needs assessment and awareness creation involving the subjects identified. There will be a month break before the process evaluation is begun. The outcome evaluation method will involve the different social workers doing a house-to-house visit, one month after the initial assessment and education, through a mixed-method research design to collect both qualitative and quantitative data.

The survey and mixed-method research design for the outcome evaluation of the study will involve a random sampling method in approaching the households. According to Elfil and Negida (2017), random sampling is appropriate for the process evaluation of the subjects of Clarksville High School because there will be an element of surprise in the home visits, making the outcome evaluation most accurate. However, possible threats to such a home-to-home visit will include the already identified limited resources in the form of finances, which may create bias as regards the social worker, who would prefer visiting the nearest households to the school. Also, issues such as bias treatment in the various households may tamper with the quality of evaluation information acquired, which may lead to wrong outcome evaluation in some households.

The research design of the proposed outcome evaluation of the updated program in Clarksville City will be a mixed-method approach. The design will target to attain both qualitative and quantitative impact of the program on teen pregnancy awareness among the stakeholders at Clarksville High School. Through the qualitative data about the updated program, the process evaluation will involve a survey that aims to find out how the creation of awareness has affected the families concerning the issue of teen pregnancy. Through the qualitative data, the teen mothers will be evaluated in the form of how much support they are afforded with both parents and the fathers. The quantitative data collected in the outcome evaluation will involve assessing the prevalence of influenced behavior among the teenagers, their parents, teachers, and male partners. This will allow the evaluation of the efficacy of the updated program in Clarksville City.The use of qualitative and quantitative research design for the outcome evaluation is to find out how the updated program has affected the lives of teenagers and relevant subjects of society. Through qualitative data collected in the process evaluation, after the initial creation of awareness, the opinions and feedback from the subjects will be able to be attained. This is the same with the quantitative data collected, which will back up as objective data to making conclusive facts about the updated program intervention. Therefore, through the facts and issues collected through the evaluated qualitative and quantitative data, the updated program can be enhanced for future application in Clarksville or other schools in the country. The qualitative and quantitative data will act as a feedback ground through which future program interventions in the social and public health of the community will be enhanced.

Creating and Selecting Assessments

The updated program intervention will involve an initial assessment and awareness creation that will be carried out twice, in the initial six months of a year. Between each awareness creation campaign, there will be a month without intervention between the month of the survey where the outcome evaluation of the program will be made through a question-and-answer session. The assessment survey questions will mainly involve the teenagers, whose prevalence of pregnancy and related health sequelae is a public health issue. The following is an example of the four groups of assessment questions that will be used in the survey process evaluation of the program intervention:

1. Predictors of sexual behaviors
2. Sexual behaviors
3. Birth control use behavior among sexually experienced
4. Knowledge regarding sexually transmitted diseases

The above survey questions for the teen mother have been identified to evaluate a change in perception of the teenagers on issues around sex. The first question group will evaluate the teenagers’ perceptions of the different social factors that can be considered predictors of their sexual behavior. These include factors such as their communication with parents on the issue of sex, previous experiences with teen pregnancy, and existing perceptions of fellow teenagers on sex and birth control. The second group of questions will play a role in the outcome evaluation of the teenagers’ knowledge of sexual behaviors. This group of questions will assess issues such as their sexual status, reasons for their engagement and disengagement with sex, and their existing experiences with sexual activities. The third group of questions will be used in the process and outcome evaluation of the program intervention to evaluate how much knowledge the teenagers have on birth control methods and measures. This will involve evaluating for birth control issues such as reasons for using or not using such methods, the frequency of using such methods, the preferred methods used, and where such methods are obtained. The fourth group of questions will evaluate the program intervention by establishing the teenagers’ knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases. This group of questions will involve assessing the different significance of condom use and sexually transmitted diseases.

The survey data collected in the outcome evaluation process will then be evaluated in the form of statistical characterization of the responses through tools such as tables and frequency charts in programs such as Microsoft Excel. Through evaluating the qualitative data from the outcome evaluation survey, relevant tables with conclusive information from the different subjects in question will be established. This will be followed by the backing quantitative findings that will have been analyzed and relevant conclusions made on the updated program intervention. The conclusions made from the outcome and process evaluation survey will provide the social workers with information and feedback from the subjects involved in the intervention hence provide direction to future program interventions in the City of Clarksville.

Evaluation Report Implications

The program intervention aims at reducing the prevalence of teen pregnancy and its related consequences to teenagers. Teen pregnancy has been identified with consequences such as an increase in school dropouts, poor health consequences, and inadequate employment opportunities afforded to such mothers. This is the main aim of the program intervention, where the targeted population is the teenagers, through other parties such as their parents and teachers. The targeted objective that will be achieved in this proposed program intervention is the prevention of teen pregnancies and their recurrence among those teenagers with an existing history of public health issues. The program will be able to prevent and manage the social and public health issue by providing relevant awareness for the teenagers while they consider activities such as sex.

By engaging different parties such as the male teenagers, parents, and teachers, the awareness step in the program intervention will aim at ensuring relevant parties in teen pregnancy have the right information and knowledge concerning the public health issue. Also, these parties are the basis for the emotional and social support of the female teenagers in Clarksville. Therefore, by involving them in the program intervention, emotional and social support will be a reality for the teenage mothers and girls in the city, hence preventing careless recurrence and the burden associated with growing up and adolescence.

The program intervention also aims at educating society, including the teenagers and the parents and teachers, concerning other consequences related to teen pregnancy that is usually not popular. This program will involve educating them on the various health implications associated with the issue of teen pregnancy. By going deep into the conversation of teen pregnancy, the parties will be instilled some aspects of critical thinking and a wider range of thinking when the issue of pregnancy comes to mind, hence providing a basis for controlling the public health issue.

It is with the same targeted public health changes that the program intervention will attain the social change needed concerning the issue of teen pregnancy. The program intervention will be able to change the sex education among the teenagers of Clarksville High School, hence able to manage the issue of pregnancy. Through the right education, proper interventions will be a mainstay among the teenagers in protecting themselves from getting teen pregnancies. For the already teen mothers, their social lives will be meaningful by ensuring they can cope in an educated and knowledgeable society, especially in getting their lives back to educational success.

The program intervention will also attain social change by ensuring the social support for teenagers is expanded. While involving the parents, teachers, and male teenagers, the program will be able to ensure adequate support is attained in ensuring the responsibility of preventing pregnancies is at the hands of every person in society. The program will also attain adequate social support for the teenage girls by ensuring the already teenage mothers will be attaining enough support, thus ensuring fewer reasons for quitting school. By involving the parents and teachers, such stakeholders will acquire adequate information for providing the best emotional and social support for teenagers to prevent teenage pregnancies. Therefore, the society in Clarksville will have relevant know how to tackle teen pregnancy from a social and health perspective, which will be crucial in managing the public health concern.

References

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Bogan, D. R., Aranmolate, R., & Mawson, A. R. (2020). Confronting the impact of teen pregnancy in Mississippi: The need for after-school programs. International journal of adolescent medicine and health, 32(5). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2017-0210

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