Publications by authors named "Freya L Sonenstein"

Objectives: To estimate national need for family planning services among men in the United States according to background characteristics, access to care, receipt of services, and contraception use.

Methods: We used weighted data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth to estimate the percentage of men aged 15 to 44 years (n = 10 395) in need of family planning, based on sexual behavior, fecundity, and not trying to get pregnant with his partner.

Results: Overall, 60% of men were in need of family planning, defined as those who ever had vaginal sex, were fecund, and had fecund partner(s) who were not trying to get pregnant with partner or partner(s) were not currently pregnant.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Preconception care for men focuses on prevention strategies implemented prior to conception of a first or subsequent pregnancy to improve pregnancy and infant outcomes. Little is known about U.S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The global adolescent population is larger than ever before and is rapidly urbanizing. Global surveillance systems to monitor youth health typically use household- and school-based recruitment methods. These systems risk not reaching the most marginalized youth made vulnerable by conditions of migration, civil conflict, and other forms of individual and structural vulnerability.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: The impact of pregnancy on the health and livelihood of adolescents aged 15-19 years is substantial. This study explored sociodemographic, behavioral, and environmental-level factors associated with adolescent pregnancy across five urban disadvantaged settings.

Methods: The Well-Being of Adolescents in Vulnerable Environments study used respondent-driven sampling (RDS) to recruit males and females from Baltimore (456), Johannesburg (496), Ibadan (449), New Delhi (500), and Shanghai (438).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Adolescent substance use has numerous consequences. Our goals in this article are to compare the prevalence and correlates of substance use among ethnically diverse adolescents.

Methods: Data were from 2,332 adolescents aged 15-19 years recruited via respondent-driven sampling from disadvantaged settings in five cities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Recent estimates indicate that 6.5 million adolescents and young adults in the United States are neither in school nor working. These youth have significant mental health concerns that require intervention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Healthy People 2020 call for improvements in meeting men's reproductive health needs but little is known about the proportion of men in need. This study describes men aged 35 to 39 in need of family planning and preconception care, demographic correlates of these needs, and contraception use among men in need of family planning. Using data from Wave 4 (2008-2010) of the National Survey of Adolescent Males, men were classified in need of family planning and preconception care if they reported sex with a female in the last year and believed that they and their partner were fecund; the former included men who were neither intentionally pregnant nor intending future children and the latter included men intending future children.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Understanding the relationship between union status and men's sexual risk behavior in their 30s is important to ensure appropriate reproductive health services for men in middle adulthood.

Methods: Data from 1,083 men aged 34-41 who participated in the 2008-2010 wave of the National Survey of Adolescent Males were used to examine differentials in sexual risk behaviors by union status, past risk behavior and selected characteristics. Bivariate tabulations were done to assess relationships between current risk behavior and background variables, multinomial regression analysis was conducted to identify associations between union status and past risk behavior, and logistic regression analysis was used to assess associations between current behavior and both union status and past behavior.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Family planning service quality and clients' satisfaction with services are important determinants of clients' contraceptive use and continuation. We examine women's experiences at family planning clinics on a range of dimensions, including patient-centered communication (PCC), and identify experiences associated with higher ratings of service quality and satisfaction. New female clients (n = 748), ages 18-35 years, from clinics in three major metropolitan areas completed computer-administered interviews between 2008 and 2009.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Out-of-school black males aged 15-24 have higher levels of sexual risk-taking than in-school black males of the same age. However, few sexual risk reduction curricula are focused on out-of-school male youth.

Methods: A sexual and reproductive health intervention conducted at a Baltimore youth employment and training program in 2008-2010 was evaluated in a study involving 197 youth aged 16-24 from a predominantly black population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To use cluster analysis to explore how coping, stress, and social support align and intersect with each other and relate to internalizing and externalizing behavior among urban adolescents and young adults disconnected from school and work.

Methods: Baseline audio computer assisted self-interview (ACASI) data from a study of 683 urban, low-income, African-American 16-24-year-old youth (mean age = 18.7; SD = 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although most Israeli teenagers have access to the web and many have used the internet to obtain health information, they do not have access to accurate and complete information about contraceptives on Hebrew language websites. Indeed other evidence suggests that teens do not use the web frequently for health information, they are wary of the information obtained from internet sites, and the search engines that they use may not lead them to the most helpful resources. While the internet has the capacity to provide teenagers with information which can assist them in preventing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, interventions that address these challenges need to be developed and rigorously tested.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Very little is known about how enjoyment of sexual behavior is linked to the relationship context of the behavior among young adults in the United States. To examine this association, multivariate logistic and ordered logistic regression analyses were conducted using data from Wave III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, collected when the participants were 18 to 26 years old (N = 2,970). Analyses explored the associations between four measures of sexual enjoyment and three measures of relationship context.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Youth who have dropped out of school engage in risky health behaviors and have limited access to health care. It is difficult for health experts to develop programs that successfully reach this population. Employment and training programs for youth who have dropped out are a potential venue for addressing the many health needs of these youth.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Data were drawn from 845 males in the National Survey of Adolescent Males who were initially aged 15-17, and followed-up 2.5 and 4.5 years later, to their early twenties.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To examine the associations between three key developmental assets and an aspect of sexual health, sexual enjoyment, which has rarely been studied in young adults, although its importance is stressed in all recent sexual health policy statements.

Methods: Using data from wave III (2001-2002) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and multiple logistic and ordered logistic regression, we explored the associations between sexual pleasure and autonomy, self-esteem, and empathy among 3,237 respondents aged 18-26 years in heterosexual relationships of ≥ 3-month duration. We also examined the distribution of sexual pleasure across various socio-demographic groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), young fathers include heterogeneous subgroups with varying early life pathways in terms of fatherhood timing, the timing of first marriage, and holding full-time employment. Using latent class growth analysis with 10 observations between ages 18 and 37, we derived five latent classes with median ages of first fatherhood below the cohort median (26.4), constituting distinct early fatherhood pathways representing 32.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Racial and ethnic health disparities are an important issue in the United States. The extent to which racial and ethnic differences in STDs among youth are related to differences in socioeconomic characteristics and risky sexual behaviors requires investigation.

Methods: Data from three waves of the National Survey of Adolescent Males (1988, 1990-1991 and 1995) were used to examine 1,880 young men's history of STDs and their patterns and trajectories of sexual risk behavior during adolescence and early adulthood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: We examine trends in adolescents' reports of discussion with parents about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and birth control methods from 1988 to 2002.

Methods: Data from the 1988 and 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males, and the 1988, 1995, and 2002 National Survey of Family Growth were analyzed to evaluate changes in discussions of female adolescents with parents about birth control methods and STDs, and changes in male adolescent discussions with parents about birth control methods. The sample includes never married males and females aged 15-17 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Despite calls to make family planning services more responsive to the values, needs and preferences of clients, few studies have asked clients about their experiences or values, and most have used surveys framed by researchers', rather than clients', perspectives.

Methods: Forty in-depth interviews exploring lifetime experiences with and values regarding services were conducted with 18-36-year-old women who visited family planning clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2007. Women were categorized as black, white, English- or Spanish-speaking Latina, or of mixed ethnicity to allow examination of differences by racial, ethnic and language group.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Self-reports are the standard measure of STD history used in survey research. We explored to what extent self-reports of ever having an STD are recanted in a follow-up data collection.

Methods: Using the National Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM), we assessed consistency over time in self-reports of ever having an STD in a sample of young men transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood (aged 15-26 years), a population in which STDs are particularly prevalent.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF