ADVOCATES FOR YOUTH

Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^®: What Health Care Providers Can Do

Adolescence is a critical developmental stage when youth are working to establish independence and individual identity. Health care professionals can help by encouraging screening and treatment, especially for teens experiencing depression, chronic anger, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancy, or sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. In the United States, many barriers limit teens' access to services. Barriers may include transportation difficulties, high cost, fear of invasive procedures, limited clinic hours, disapproving health care personnel, and fear that parents will find out. Societal negativity about teenage sexuality combined with significant barriers to health services may encourage sexual risk behaviors by teens.

As a health care professional, you are already an advocate for youth. There are things that you can do to help youth become sexually healthy adults. Ensure that everyone working in your practice or clinic works to provide a youth-friendly environment, eliminating the barriers that deter so many young people from getting important health services and build and maintain trusting relationships with youth. What else can you do to promote Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^®?

1. Permit teens to walk-in for services.
2. Set aside late afternoon, early evening, and Saturday morning appointments for teens' use.
3. Make sure that the waiting room is welcoming to young men and young women, to straight and gay teens, and to youth of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
4. Hang the Rights. Respect. Responsibility.^® posters. Click here to order additional, or larger, copies.
5. Make available consumer health information that is culturally appropriate and in the language(s) of the youth served.
6. Assure teens' confidentiality. Post confidentiality policies prominently in the waiting room as well as on sign-in sheets and client forms.
7. Alert teens that using their parents' health insurance may trigger an Explanation of Benefits form. Always offer teens free services or reduced fees for services, if you can.
8. Ensure that teens know that they can, if they wish, bring a friend, parent, or significant other with them when discussing health concerns with you. Place signs in the waiting room, inviting youth to bring someone with them.
9. Make condoms freely available in private spaces, such as restrooms and examining rooms. Post "take some" signs on bowls of condoms.
10. Ensure that teens need not undergo unnecessary procedures, such as pelvic exams, before receiving emergency contraception or regular birth control pills.
11. Educate youth about emergency contraceptive pills (ECP) and offer prescriptions to youth. Better yet, supply youth with ECP and with condoms.
12. Provide youth with time to ask questions and explore their options. Listen as well as talk.
13. Ask youth about important aspects of their lives—their education, friendships, family relationships, and goals as well as about their sexuality and other issues, such as substance use and violence. Avoid making assumptions about youth based on their age, gender, appearance, ability/disability, or race/ethnicity and avoid assuming that youth are/are not sexually active or heterosexual/homosexual.
14. Express respect for responsible sexual health behavior.
15. Sign the petition, "I Support Young People's Right to Be Responsible."