Screening for Sexual Activity and Sexual Risk Assessment
Clinical Service Goal
Sexual history and sexual risk assessments are foundational ASRH services. These screening practices enable care teams to identify risk behaviors and offer protective interventions.
Key Foundations
Strategies related to assessment, policy, and environment
Equipping Teams
Strategies that build clinic staff capacity
Service Delivery
Strategies to strengthen processes, procedures, and systems involved in delivering clinical services
Engaging Adolescent Patients and Families
Strategies to educate and build productive partnerships with adolescents and their families+ (These strategies recognize the important role that parents can play in relation to ASRH, even while protecting confidentiality remains a cornerstone of adolescent care).
Strategies
Key Foundations
Equipping Teams
Tools & Resources
Service Delivery
Implementation Tips
- Incorporate a sexual risk assessment as part of a broader health assessment
- In addition to risks, assess the adolescent patient’s strengths with regard to knowledge, skills, and behaviors
- Use process mapping techniques or co-design to document current clinic workflow and identify where risk assessment best fits
- Use adolescent-friendly tablet-based technology to capture sexual activity history and sexual risk in a confidential manner
- Send assessment tools via text message to be completed ahead of the clinic visit
Tools & Resources
Broader Risk Assessment Tools
Detailed Sexual Risk Assessment Tools
Service Delivery
Implementation tips
- Use EHR prompts or templates
- Work with health informatics staff and consult with your Health Center Controlled Network (HCCN) or Primary Care Association (PCA) to tailor the health center’s EHR system to facilitate sexual history taking and risk assessment
Engaging Adolescent Patients and Families
Implementation tips
- Discuss adolescent development and the importance of a sexual risk assessment with parents and answer any questions they may have
- Provide resources on parent-adolescent communication and adolescent health and development
- Have parents complete a health assessment regarding their adolescent’s general health to help involve them in their child’s care and make them feel included
