Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Jun 15, 2020
Date Accepted: Oct 2, 2020
African American Emerging Adult Perspectives on Unintended Pregnancy: Opportunities to Meet their Needs in the Mobile Technology Space
ABSTRACT
Background:
In the U.S., a disproportionate number of unintended pregnancies occur among African Americans, particularly those in their later teenage years and early 20’s. Mobile technology is becoming more ubiquitous as a method for health promotion; however, relatively little research has been done with this population to determine their perspectives about unintended pregnancy, the potential of successfully using mobile technology to prevent unintended pregnancy, and the content of such programs.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to obtain the perspectives of African American emerging adults about unintended pregnancy and mobile technology to reduce unintended pregnancy rates.
Methods:
Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 83 African Americans, ages 18-21 years. Data were analyzed using an open coding process. Emergent codes were then added as needed and themes and subthemes were identified.
Results:
Participants cited the social environment and lack of education as primary reasons for disproportionate rates of unintended pregnancy. They noted that unintended pregnancy is an important issue and that they desire more sexual health information. They enthusiastically supported mobile technology as a means to communicate unintended pregnancy prevention programming, and offered many suggestions for program content, look, and feel.
Conclusions:
Young and emerging adult African Americans want and need sexual health resources, and a mobile-based platform could be widely accepted and address needs to lower disproportionate rates of unintended pregnancy. An essential next step is to use these findings to inform the development of a mobile-based unintended pregnancy prevention and sexual health program prototype to determine feasibility.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.