Funded Projects

Optimizing Pediatric Emergency Department STI Education

Project Year

2022

City & State

Jacksonville, Florida

Program Name

CATCH Resident

Topic

STIs

Program Description

"Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are a significant problem worldwide.[1] STIs in the United States continue to increase, reaching a new high in 2019 for the 6th consecutive year.[2] More than 2.5 million cases of Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Syphilis were reported and disproportionately affect adolescents and racial minority groups.[2] Adolescents face unique barriers to STI prevention and treatment. These barriers include lack of education, lack of access to community providers and concerns of privacy or cost of prevention, diagnosis and treatment.[3, 4] Youth utilize the Emergency Department (ED) at higher rates than primary care office for STI concerns, even when other community resources are in closer in proximity.[5] Multiple studies have shown that ED providers often fail to inquire and address adolescent sexual behaviors, despite a history of high-risk sexual behavior being more common in this group.[6, 7] The ED is an underutilized setting to address lack of knowledge of STIs and community resources with high-risk adolescents.[6, 8, 9] ED physicians use multiple methods for educating their patients, including verbal education, pamphlets, or printed discharge instructions. However, these traditional methods have been shown to be less effective than multimedia approaches.[10, 11] Media plays an important role in the lives of adolescents and can improve understanding of disease processes and discharge instructions in adolescent populations.[12-15] It is reasonable to extrapolate that a media-based sexual education intervention for adolescents will have greater impact over traditional methods. We will optimize adolescent STI education at the UF Health- Jacksonville (UF) Pediatric ED utilizing an innovative, multi-media educational resources. Many high-risk adolescents seek evaluation and treatment for STI related concerns in our Pediatric ED. Several frequently return for similar complaints and are high risk for complications. Currently, STI education for adolescents is limited to standard, template discharge instructions, and individualized health care worker verbal education. The UF Emergency and Pediatric Department faculty and staff recognize the need for improving the sexual healthcare of our high-risk adolescent population and are collaborating to accomplish these project goals: • Evaluate current UF Pediatric ED STI educational methods; • Identify innovative and functional means to provide STI education within the ED; • Determine existing barriers to local community health resource access; • Engage local community agencies and adolescents to ensure dependable, equitable follow-up care and ongoing access for adolescents; • Implement and evaluate methods of education, including standardized Center for Disease Control (CDC) Fact Sheets; • Develop and evaluate multimedia educational interventions with adolescents and community partners; • Organize focus groups to identify optimal educational strategies Development of an effective educational video, that integrates youth voice and input, will be a major component of the project. It will emphasize STI prevention and consequences, as well as, improve awareness of community resources. The Florida Department of Health, Jacksonville Area Sexual Minority Youth Network and the Delores Barr Weaver Foundation are community agencies who expressed strong support and interest in collaborating on the creation of this educational video and increasing referral community resources. We will use focus groups with community partners and adolescents to ensure educational materials are engaging and effective. Tablets will be utilized as a platform for providing this engaging video during the ED visit and will be evaluated using a pre- and post-visit surveys and community feedback. This project is self-sustainable and provides a foundation of collaboration with community partners and youth to continue to expand this program and other services aimed at improving sexual health of high-risk adolescents. We also hope to disseminate this work to other youth serving settings, translate our video into other languages to accommodate our multicultural community and continue improving our referral process to community resources. "

Project Goal

The goal of this QI project is to optimize STI education, risk awareness and community resource awareness among high-risk adolescent patients presenting to the University of Florida Pediatric Emergency Department by creating a multimedia form of education with community partners and local adolescents.

Project Objective 1

Identify patient STI knowledge gaps and improve the knowledge on sexually transmitted infections in the Pediatric Emergency Department. We will have seventy five percent of participants will score greater than or equal to 80% on post-test survey by May 2023.

Project Objective 2

Improve awareness of community partners/clinics. We will have 80% of participants able to identify community resources on post-test survey by May 2023.

Project Objective 3

Identify the most effective method of education. We will increase change from pre-survey to post survey by 20% by May 2023.

AAP District

District X

Institutional Name

University of Florida College of Medicine- Jacksonville

Contact 1

Florinda Islamovic