Health Initiatives for the Adolescent
Reproductive and Sexual Health Needs of Adolescent Students: Perspectives of School Teachers in Chandiagarh, India
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dinesh Kumar, Naveen Goel, Munesh Kumar Sharma
Reproductive and sexual health challenges of adolescents and their growing needs have so far been neglected in India. We explore opinions of teachers regarding mentoring as a possible way of addressing reproductive and sexual health needs of adolescent students. A longitudinal survey among 376 teachers and 1819 adolescent students in 12 schools of Chandigarh, India, selected by stratified multi-stage random sampling under ICMR sponsored project was done. There were 71(18.9%) teachers of the opinion that mentoring means counseling while 55(14.6%) respondents were of the opinion that mentoring is to motivate the students and handle problem of mentees. Teacher was preferred as mentor by 150(39.8%) respondents. Perceived qualities of mentor included friendly nature (85.4%), motivating (81.6%), and willing to guide (78.5%). There were 335(89.1%) respondents who were willing to have pre mentoring sessions. About 77.0% respondents were found in favor of giving freedom to the students to choose their mentors. About 86.7% respondents were of the opinion that mentoring can be helpful in promotion of adolescent health. Mentoring was acceptable to 73% respondents. Mentoring can offer a huge potential for addressing several Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health (ARSH) needs of adolescents and young youths. It can be successfully implemented as an effective strategy for adolescent health promotion for their Planned Parenthood. Further research in these directions may expand the range of outcomes for which mentoring relationships are indicative of some beneficial effect.
The Development and Evaluation of a Peer-led, School-based Mental Health Promotion Intervention
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Emma Williams
It is important that people are able to develop and maintain their own positive mental health (MH). This is particularly true for young people who are vulnerable to the onset of MH problems, with 50% of adult mental health disorders established by the age of 14. Mental health promotion (MHP) can be effective at enhancing the mental health of this age group. Peer education in particular can be useful for supporting learning of skills, knowledge and behaviours as both learners and educators share a similar status (age) that increases relatability to a topic. In addition, because peer education supports engagement in learning, it is especially suited to teaching and learning about sensitive topics such as MH. The study reported here aims to develop and evaluate a MHP intervention delivered by undergraduate pharmacy students to high school students aged 13-14. Using the UK Medical Research Council guidelines for developing and evaluating complex interventions, stakeholder feasibility testing (pilot work) has been completed, the positive results are being used to inform the design of the final intervention, in conjunction with a scoping review and acceptability testing. Evaluation of the study is in the form of pre and post intervention MH knowledge and attitude questionnaires for both the high school pupils and the pharmacy students. A mental health stigma tool is additionally used with the high school pupils to measure impact.
