Youth United Through Health Education (YUTHE) Program

Youth United Through Health Education (YUTHE) is a community-level peer outreach program, which aims to increase awareness and improve screening of sexually transmitted infections. The program focuses on urban African-American adolescents.

Sexually experienced youth aged 12-22 years met with peers during a 15-minute encounter. Participants completed a risk assessment and received prevention education and condom distribution.

The goal of the program is to increase awareness of screening for sexually transmitted infections in African-American adolescents.

1,483 adolescents were involved in the program evaluation, split into control and intervention groups.

Although no increase was seen in screenings among the intervention group, those who were involved in the program were more likely to know that sexually transmitted diseases could be asymptomatic (odds ratios [OR] 1.36, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.08–1.72). They were also more likely to be aware of urine-based sexually transmitted screening tests (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.04–1.72), perceived themselves as at-risk of sexually transmitted infection (OR 1.71, 95% CI 1.11–2.62), and were concerned about acquiring an infection (OR 1.50, 95% CI 1.04–2.18).

Additionally, participants who were exposed to the YUTHE program once (OR = 2.12, 95% CI = 1.11-4.03) or more (OR 2.78, 95% CI 1.81–4.26), were more likely to have been tested for sexually transmitted infections in the previous six months.