NCT03866811

Reducing Teen Pregnancy in the Emergency Department

Targeting High Risk Teens in the Emergency Department: A User-Informed, Theory-Based Intervention Using Text Messaging to Reduce Teen Pregnancy

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 146 (actual)
• Sponsor: Columbia University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 14 Years – 19 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study will determine the feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy of an emergency department-based pregnancy prevention intervention targeting sexually active adolescent female emergency department patients.

Detailed description

Emergency Departments (ED) care for 15 million adolescents each year. Adolescents who use the ED are at particularly high risk of unintended pregnancy. To date, no intervention has successfully increased contraception use among this high risk, hard-to-reach ED population. In this study, the investigators will conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial of a user-informed, theory-based, personalized, interactive, pregnancy prevention text messaging intervention (Dr. Erica) to determine its feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy. The investigators hypothesize that high risk adolescent female ED patients who receive Dr. Erica will more often initiate contraceptives than those females who receive standard discharge instructions alone. At baseline and follow-up assessment at 3 months, participants will provide information regarding effective contraception initiation, any contraception at last intercourse, follow up with reproductive preventive health services, and contraception self-efficacy.

Conditions

• Reproductive Behavior
• Sexual Behavior
• Adolescent Behavior
• Contraception

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Dr. Erica	The 10 week texting intervention contains the follow characteristics to increase engagement: (1) Dr. ERICA (Emergency Room Interventions to Improve the Care of Adolescents): The persona and brand of the intervention is Dr. Erica, a relatable, empathetic, straightforward and reliable female doctor; (2) Personalization: Information collected at baseline will be incorporated into each individualized program; (3) Interactivity: The majority of text message algorithms contain 3-4 two-way automated messaging conversations. (4) Feedback loops: The investigators will collect feedback from participants to prompt action; (5) Visual stimuli: Texts include emojis, memes, and other visual stimuli, similar to current teen texting behaviors; (6) Social media: The investigators designed sexual health comic strips posted as an Instagram story; (7) Links and role modeling: Texts contain links to testimonials, influencers, and evidence-based websites.

Timeline

• Start date: 2019-03-03
• Primary completion: 2020-07-02
• Completion: 2020-07-02
• First posted: 2019-03-07
• Last updated: 2024-08-06
• Results posted: 2024-08-06

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States