# An Emergency Department-Based Study to Reduce Adolescent Pregnancy Rates

> **NIH NIH R21** · CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA · 2020 · $212,504

## Abstract

PROJECT ABSTRACT
Unintended adolescent pregnancy rates remain unacceptably high in the United States, and result in poor
health outcomes for the young mothers and their babies, as well as significant social and financial costs to
communities and society as a whole. While many factors contribute to the high rate of unintended pregnancies
in this age group, an important issue that is potentially amenable to intervention is non-use of contraception.
Therefore, research focused on increasing initiation of contraception among adolescents, particularly those at
high risk of pregnancy, is crucial. One approach that has been understudied is reaching these adolescents in
non-traditional sites of clinical care – care settings that do not currently routinely provide contraception
services. The Emergency Department (ED) is a setting that is well-positioned to provide these services, as
almost 19 million adolescents seek care in EDs each year, and many adolescents are amenable to receiving
reproductive health care services in this setting. For the highest-risk patients, the ED is often their only or
primary contact with the health care system, and so in this setting we have a vital window of opportunity to
improve contraception access for adolescents who are unlikely to be reached through other clinical settings.
We seek to capitalize on our prior work and our ED programs focused on sexual health education in order to
better understand the decision-making around contraception initiation of adolescents at high risk for
pregnancy. Our long-term goal is to reduce unintended pregnancy by improving access to contraception
among adolescents seeking care in the ED setting. By elucidating factors that affect decision-making as well
as barriers and facilitators to conception initiation in the ED setting, we will gain a critical understanding that will
lead to developing patient-centered approaches for increasing contraception initiation among these patients.
To do this, we will conduct a multi-site, mixed methodology study to assess attitudes, barriers and facilitators
to initiating contraception in the ED among this high-risk group of patients. We will adapt contraceptive
counseling approaches used in outpatient clinical settings to deliver counseling during the ED visit, and our
methods will allow us to explore factors associated with initiation of contraception during and after the ED visit
as well as issues affecting follow-up after ED care. Ultimately, we will develop a toolkit supporting
contraceptive counseling and delivery in the ED, and design processes to support increased use of
contraception among adolescents.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9932433
- **Project number:** 5R21HD095096-02
- **Recipient organization:** CHILDREN'S HOSP OF PHILADELPHIA
- **Principal Investigator:** CYNTHIA J MOLLEN
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $212,504
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-06-01 → 2022-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9932433

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9932433, An Emergency Department-Based Study to Reduce Adolescent Pregnancy Rates (5R21HD095096-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9932433. Licensed CC0.

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