Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Jul 22, 2021
Date Accepted: Mar 18, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Mar 29, 2022
The Impact of COVID-19 on the Delivery of Educational Programs in Native American Communities: A Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite facilitating access to culturally responsive sexual health content for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth, barriers to disseminating virtual programs in tribal communities, similar to those identified for in-person programs, continue to exist due to several reasons. An emerging challenge of the 21st century was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the delivery of both in-person and virtual sexual health programs for AI/AN youth.
Objective:
This study provides an in-depth understanding of the main challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the delivery of sexual health education programs in Native communities, and the resulting move to online programming. It will also highlight the main COVID-19-related challenges experienced by AI/AN youth.
Methods:
An exploratory descriptive qualitative design approach was adopted to carry out in-depth individual (5) and collective (1) key informant interviews. A total of eight Native and non-Native sexual health educators served as key informants and shared their personal experiences with the delivery of sexual health education programs for youth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews were conducted virtually from October to November 2020 using Zoom to reach participants dispersed across different regions of the United States. We followed the consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) as a reference for the study methodology. We used Braun & Clarke’s framework (2006) to conduct a thematic analysis.
Results:
Experts’ opinions were structured according to four main themes: (1) competing community priorities during COVID-19; (2) moving to web-based programming: skills, training, support; (3) recruiting youth; and (4) challenges for implementation in the household environment. These themes are complementary, connected, and should be considered holistically for the development, dissemination, and implementation of online sexual health programs for AI/AN youth, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Conclusions:
The results raise the following points for discussion: (a) Building partnerships with schools and community organizations facilitates program adaptation and implementation; (b) there is a need to adopt a holistic approach when addressing youth sexual health in AI/AN communities; (c) a systematic and culturally-responsive adaptation approach ensures effective virtual program delivery; and (d) community and youth engagement is essential for the success of virtual sexual health programs. Findings can provide recommendations on actions to be taken by sexual health educators and guidelines to follow to ensure cultural sensitivity, effective adaptation, and successful implementation when setting out to advocate for online sexual health programs for AI/AN youth. Clinical Trial: N/A
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© 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.