Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research
Date Submitted: Sep 13, 2023
Date Accepted: Sep 24, 2024
Promoting Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Pakistan: Development and Pilot of a Co-Created Social Media Intervention.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a curriculum-based approach to learning and teaching about sexuality that focuses on the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social domains. The new CSE guideline emphasizes gender issues and is firmly rooted in a human rights-based approach to sexuality. A recent cross-sectional community readiness assessment in Islamabad, Pakistan, found that the community is at the denial or resistant stage when it comes to implementing school-based sexuality education. The reluctance was attributed to a lack of understanding and widespread misconceptions about CSE.
Objective:
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to use the co-creation process of complex health intervention development to develop, pilot, and evaluate the impact of an intervention based on community readiness level to respond to community resistance by introducing CSE contents, their anticipated benefits, and addressing prevalent misconceptions through awareness and promotion content for digital social media platforms.
Methods:
Methods:
For the development of the intervention (audio-video content), focus group discussion sessions with key stakeholders were held. Two videos were produced and shared on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. A comprehensive process and impact evaluation of the videos and intervention development phase was conducted to evaluate audience exposure, reach, engagement, demographics, retention, and in-depth insights.
Results:
Results:
With a total reach of 432,457 and 735,563 for the first and second videos, respectively, on all social media platforms, social media platforms provide an opportunity to communicate, promote, and engage with important stakeholders to raise awareness and obtain support for CSE. According to the findings, the public is responsive to CSE promotion content developed for social media platforms (total engagement=11,578), and these platforms have a significant demographic and geographical reach. With a net sentiment score of 0.83 (minimum=-3, maximum=5), end-user participation was also positive, and audience feedback highlighted the reasons for positive and negative criticism.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
To promote sexuality education in Pakistan, it is vital to overcome opposition through sensitizing society, and digital social media platforms offer a unique, though underutilized, chance to do so through reliable influencer marketing. Clinical Trial: Not applicable
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