Renee Evangeline Sieving

Objective: Negative consequences from alcohol use continue to be a concern on university campuses in the USA. In this paper, we describe the development and formative evaluation of an ongoing event-specific bystander intervention to encourage personal and bystander protective behavioural strategies among college students. Methods: The Rams Take Care, Rams Take Action intervention takes place within the context of a US college football home game. The programme incorporates several empirically supported behaviour change strategies including motivational interviewing, public commitments and the use of branded merchandise. The programme is delivered by trained peer educators. Participants: The programme was evaluated by means of a survey of undergraduate students who obtained tickets to a home football game during the 2018 season ( N = 595). Results: Students who pledged to engage in protective behavioural strategies, and subsequently remembered their pledge, reported greater use of both personal (i.e. using a sober driver) and bystander (e.g. encouraging friends to use the buddy system) protective behavioural strategies. Conclusions: This inexpensive, brief intervention holds promise for reducing the negative consequences of US college students’ alcohol use and raises the possibility that event-specific interventions could have broader preventive effects than previously documented.

OBJECTIVES: To quantify adolescent- and parent-perceived importance of provider-adolescent discussions about sexual and reproductive health (SRH), describe prevalence of provider confidentiality practices and provider-adolescent discussions about SRH topics during preventive visits, and identify missed opportunities for such conversations. METHODS: We used data from a national Internet survey of 11- to 17-year-old adolescents and their parents. Data were weighted to represent the noninstitutionalized US adolescent population. Adolescents who had a preventive visit in the past 2 years and their parents reported on perceived importance of provider-adolescent discussions about SRH topics: puberty, safe dating, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual decision-making, sexually transmitted infections and HIV, methods of birth control, and where to get SRH services. Adolescents and parents reported whether they had ever discussed confidentiality with the adolescent’s provider. Adolescents reported experiences at their most recent preventive visit, including whether a provider spoke about specific SRH topics and whether they had time alone with a provider. RESULTS: A majority of adolescents and parents deemed provider-adolescent discussions about puberty, sexually transmitted infections and HIV, and birth control as important. However, fewer than one-third of adolescents reported discussions about SRH topics other than puberty at their most recent preventive visit. These discussions were particularly uncommon among younger adolescents. Within age groups, discussions about several topics varied by sex. CONCLUSIONS: Although most parents and adolescents value provider-adolescent discussions of selected SRH topics, these discussions do not occur routinely during preventive visits. Preventive visits represent a missed opportunity for adolescents to receive screening, education, and guidance related to SRH.

This study describes transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth perceptions of parental messages regarding sexuality and sexual/romantic relationships and how those messages impact feelings and decisions about their sexual health. Eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews (mean = 66 minutes) with TGD young people (16-23 years) were included in this qualitative analysis. Illustrated by participant quotes, four themes are discussed: (1) parent’s sexual values as context and a critical testing ground, (2) LGBTQ sexuality, (3) youths’ futures through cisnormative and heteronormative lenses, and (4) impact of parental messaging on youth’s sexual health. Implications include working with families to de-center cisgender perspectives in messaging.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents are in a unique developmental stage, ideal for initiating healthy behaviors and benefiting from health promotion interventions. In this study, we used positive youth development and resilience frameworks, to investigate the role of internal assets as a protective factor for bullying and emotional distress among early adolescents, with attention to whether those associations vary by sex.METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of the 2013 Minnesota Student Survey, a cross‐sectional, population‐based survey of Minnesota youth. Participating eighth grade students (N = 42,841) reported on internal assets, physical, relational and cyberbullying involvement, and emotional distress.RESULTS: Logistic regression analyses, stratified by sex and controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, revealed that students with higher internal assets had lower odds of all forms of bullying victimization and perpetration than those with lower internal assets. Higher levels of internal assets were also associated with lower odds of emotional distress. All associations were significant for boys and girls, but appeared stronger for girls.CONCLUSIONS: Findings indicate that internal assets may buffer young teens from bullying and from the emotional distress that may result from bullying involvement. Approaches bolstering internal assets may be beneficial for combating bullying and emotional distress during early adolescence.