Post 7: Parental Counseling Pilot

After the fieldwork, we saw that low contraceptive use and high teenage pregnancy were worrisome when zooming in on the potential risk factors for maternal deaths. For that reason, we dedicated our last internship weeks to analyzing and describing the reproductive health outlook in Meghalaya. The objective was to enable the government and other actors to evaluate how the system is working and what are gaps and provide them first steps that can be implemented to solve some issues among the schemes. 

We identify a latent information problem that explains why adolescents are not using contraceptives. Not all adolescents receive information regarding reproductive health, even at school, at home, or in health facilities, then they trust Internet sources that are not trustworthy in many cases. 

Therefore, our policy recommendation to increase the use of contraceptives in adolescents relied on stakeholders that were highly relevant to providing information to adolescents, especially parents. Parents are the closest to adolescents, but at the same time, they are not having conversations regarding reproductive health, and there is no program that can help them develop the skills needed to have these conversations. Therefore, a parental counseling proposal was piloted and evaluated to give the state government ideas and tools on how to improve parents' and adolescents' knowledge about reproductive health.

The objective of the parental counseling pilot was to address the lack of sexual-related conversations between parents and teenagers by increasing parents' knowledge and skills about reproductive health so they can have and improve discussions about it with their children.

For the content, we designed an adaptation of the methodology used in "Talking Parents, Healthy Teens" (Eastman, Corona, & Schuster, 2006), a parenting program for parents of sixth to tenth graders developed based on previous research, formative research, and theories of behavioral change. Furthermore, we also included material from raisingchildren.net.au, the Australian parenting website aimed to help parents and careers make informed decisions that work for their family circumstances. The adapted design was structured as follows: positive parent-adolescent relationship, active listening (unjudgmental and inviting conversations), conversations about sensitive topics, and delay tactics for sexual activity. 

Finally, the structure of both sessions included: an ice breaker; a pre-post survey for the parents; the objective of the session; a short lecture that included videos and examples on how to put into practice the skills learned; an activity that involved parents (role play or discussion in groups), and, during the closing remarks, a summary of the main concepts taught. Furthermore, we printed handouts in Khasi for the parents with the primary information about active listening and how to say no to someone who is under pressure in an unwanted sexual situation to develop the activities in the counseling session and practice at home.