Background: Adolescents make poor decisions about their sexuality due to religious-social-cultural beliefs and poor parental involvement. These pose threats to their transition from this delicate phase of life to adulthood resulting poor health outcomes. Marie Stopes Nigeria trained private health providers located in communities with high unmet need on youth friendliness in the delivery adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) service using the values clarification and Attitudinal Change tool. This was balanced with the training of adolescents as demand creation agents to target in-and out-of-school adolescents with SRH Information, Education and Communication (IEC) to access SRH services marie supported private health facilities at subsidized cost.
Methods: The study focused on 57 Private health Facilities in Mariestopes Blue Star Network operational in the South-east region between 2017 to 2020. Routine service data generated in the facilities were abstracted from Marie Stopes internal database. The data was analysed descriptively.
Results: The adolescent's mobilization strategy had a multiplier effect on adolescent reach in family planning services. These satisfied users courageously raised awareness about contrception among in-and-out of school adolescents, referred them to the youth friendly providers. This led to significant increase in contraceptive service uptake in te focal facilities. The proportion of adolescent clients served increased from 4.6% in 2017 to 18.9% in 2020 following the introduction of the adolescent-focused strategy in 2017.
Conclusion: The use adolescents peer-to-peer demand creation strategy reinforced with IEC has positive impacts on the adolescent client footfall in the private health facilities for contraception. The use of VCAT to enhance youth friendly service delivery should be scaled to other private health providers.
