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Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study
BACKGROUND: Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) among young adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is still a major public health challenge. Early school-based sexuality education programs and sexual health information sharing between teachers, parents and young people have been consider...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8444543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34530796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11728-2 |
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author | Mcharo, Ruby Doryn Mayaud, Philippe Msuya, Sia E. |
author_facet | Mcharo, Ruby Doryn Mayaud, Philippe Msuya, Sia E. |
author_sort | Mcharo, Ruby Doryn |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) among young adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is still a major public health challenge. Early school-based sexuality education programs and sexual health information sharing between teachers, parents and young people have been considered protective against the sexual health risks to which young people are exposed. There is, however, limited information on the preferred choices of “where”, “how” and “from whom” young people would like to receive SRH information. We aimed to describe the experience and preferences of young people regarding their SRH education and learning and in particular communication with their parents/guardians. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study among randomly selected students aged 18-24y attending Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Mbeya, Tanzania. We used a self-administered questionnaire to collect information on SRH education received, ability to discuss SRH matters with a parent/guardian and SRH information gaps encountered during their early sexual experience. RESULTS: We enrolled 504 students from 5 HLIs, of whom 446 (88.5%) reported to be sexually active, with mean age at sexual debut of 18.4y (SD 2.2). About 61% (307/504) of the participants found it difficult to discuss or did not discuss SRH matters with their parent/guardian while growing up. Learning about SRH matters was reported from peers (30.2%) and teacher-led school curriculum (22.7%). There was a strong gender-biased preference on SRH matters’ discussions, female and male participants preferred discussions with adults of their respective sex. Peers (18.2%), media (16.2%) and schools (14.2%) were described as the preferred sources of SRH information. On recalling their first sexual experience, sexually-initiated participants felt they needed to know more about sexual feelings, emotions and relationships (28.8%), safer sex (13.5%), how to be able to say ‘No’ (10.7%) and how to use a condom correctly (10.2%). CONCLUSION: Young people have a gender preference when it comes to learning about SRH matters from their parents; however, such conversations seldom occur. Community health education should focus on building skills of parents on parent-child communication on SRH matters so as to empower them to confidently initiate and convey accurate SRH information. Comprehensive SRH education and skills building need to be strengthened in the current school SRH curriculum in order to meet the demand and needs of students and increase the competence of teachers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11728-2. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8444543 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84445432021-09-17 Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study Mcharo, Ruby Doryn Mayaud, Philippe Msuya, Sia E. BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) among young adults in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) is still a major public health challenge. Early school-based sexuality education programs and sexual health information sharing between teachers, parents and young people have been considered protective against the sexual health risks to which young people are exposed. There is, however, limited information on the preferred choices of “where”, “how” and “from whom” young people would like to receive SRH information. We aimed to describe the experience and preferences of young people regarding their SRH education and learning and in particular communication with their parents/guardians. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study among randomly selected students aged 18-24y attending Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Mbeya, Tanzania. We used a self-administered questionnaire to collect information on SRH education received, ability to discuss SRH matters with a parent/guardian and SRH information gaps encountered during their early sexual experience. RESULTS: We enrolled 504 students from 5 HLIs, of whom 446 (88.5%) reported to be sexually active, with mean age at sexual debut of 18.4y (SD 2.2). About 61% (307/504) of the participants found it difficult to discuss or did not discuss SRH matters with their parent/guardian while growing up. Learning about SRH matters was reported from peers (30.2%) and teacher-led school curriculum (22.7%). There was a strong gender-biased preference on SRH matters’ discussions, female and male participants preferred discussions with adults of their respective sex. Peers (18.2%), media (16.2%) and schools (14.2%) were described as the preferred sources of SRH information. On recalling their first sexual experience, sexually-initiated participants felt they needed to know more about sexual feelings, emotions and relationships (28.8%), safer sex (13.5%), how to be able to say ‘No’ (10.7%) and how to use a condom correctly (10.2%). CONCLUSION: Young people have a gender preference when it comes to learning about SRH matters from their parents; however, such conversations seldom occur. Community health education should focus on building skills of parents on parent-child communication on SRH matters so as to empower them to confidently initiate and convey accurate SRH information. Comprehensive SRH education and skills building need to be strengthened in the current school SRH curriculum in order to meet the demand and needs of students and increase the competence of teachers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-11728-2. BioMed Central 2021-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8444543/ /pubmed/34530796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11728-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Mcharo, Ruby Doryn Mayaud, Philippe Msuya, Sia E. Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title | Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title_full | Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title_fullStr | Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title_full_unstemmed | Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title_short | Where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information? Experiences from students in higher learning institutions in Mbeya, Tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
title_sort | where and how do young people like to get their sexual and reproductive health (srh) information? experiences from students in higher learning institutions in mbeya, tanzania: a cross-sectional study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8444543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34530796 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11728-2 |
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