Session: Sexual and Reproductive Health Among Trauma-Affected Youth (Society for Social Work and Research 25th Annual Conference - Social Work Science for Social Change)

Social workers are uniquely positioned to affect social change in adolescent sexual and reproductive health with and for the trauma-affected youth they serve. Youth who have experienced trauma, including youth experiencing homelessness and youth with a child maltreatment history, are at heightened sexual health risk as teens and young adults, including increased rates of sexually transmitted infection (STI) exposure and unintended pregnancy. This increased risk is due to myriad, multi-level factors, including increased individual risk behavior, increased risk of sexual exploitation, and reduced access to attuned, trauma-informed sexual and reproductive health education and care. A well-established body of literature consistently demonstrates that adolescent childbirth is a risk factor for a host of psychosocial problems for both the young parent and child, particularly for young women, including mothers’ reduced likelihood of completing high school, and increased likelihood of infants’ premature birth, infant death, and child abuse and neglect. The risk of child abuse and neglect is heightened among those children whose mothers were victims themselves of child maltreatment. Yet, young, trauma-affected mothers often cite becoming parents as an incredibly meaningful, albeit challenging, part of their lives. Using a reproductive justice framework, this symposium presents an array of innovative, multi-method community-engaged research exploring how to sensitively address sexual and reproductive health needs of trauma-affected youth so that youth are supported to make decisions about their health to the benefit of both themselves and their (future) young families. The symposium will open with a grounded theory study of the parenting and mental health needs of young mothers with their own history of child maltreatment. We will then move to several studies employing thematic analyses of youth and provider perspectives on sexual and reproductive health. The second symposium study will report findings on foster care staff training and support needs required in order to address sexual and reproductive health among the youth they are serving. The third symposium paper will explore how a new intervention for youth experiencing homelessness works to link youth to housing as part of its holistic approach to sexual and reproductive health. The fourth symposium paper will report on how a comprehensive sexual and reproductive health program provides youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services to youth experiencing homelessness, using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines. We will close the symposium by sharing longitudinal outcomes of a sexual and reproductive health program for youth experiencing homelessness, following the 68 youth participants for 12 months after the conclusion of the program. After this symposium, participants will leave with a rich understanding of how social work research is contributing exceptional insights into how to affect social change by sensitively addressing sexual and reproductive health among trauma-affected youth.