Sexual Health: Clinical Resources

Adolescent Sexual Health

National Coalition for Sexual Health (NCSH): For Providers
NCSH: The National Coalition offers a guide to help health care providers better integrate sexual health conversations and preventive services into routine visits with adolescents and adults. Additional tools include Sexual Health Questions to Ask All Patients, pocket cards, and a compendium of resources.

Sexual Health
Adolescent Health Initiative: AHI offers an array of tools to help providers and health centers deliver strengths-based sexual health care to adolescents. Topics include confidentiality, strengths-based approaches, chlamydia screening, HPV vaccinations, and more.

Patient Care: Adolescent Sexual Health
American Academy of Pediatrics: AAP has assembled a collection of tools and resources to support pediatricians and other health care providers interested in improving sexual health care for adolescents and young adults.

Why (and How) Providers Should Get Consent in the Exam Room
Bedsider Providers: Obtaining consent for an exam does not need to mean having a patient sign a lengthy consent form before a pelvic exam is performed. It does involve asking and waiting for verbal permission to touch. This article provides a few practical examples of how you can incorporate the language of explicit consent in the exam room.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Care: Best Practices for Adolescents and Adults
New York City Health Department: This guide sets forth best practices for sexual and reproductive health. It focuses on contraceptive care and the prevention, screening, and testing of STIs and HIV.

Treating Adolescent Patients
American Sexual Health Association: Taking care of young people can be a challenge since they often do not visit their health care provider on a regular basis (especially boys and young men). The tools on this page are meant to trigger questions you may want to ask adolescent patients, even during a simple sports physical.

Contraception

Contraceptive Counseling Model
CAI: This model outlines steps and skills for contraceptive counseling, including guiding questions and actions. It is one of the first tools to apply principles of reproductive justice in the delivery of family planning services.

Contraception
Reproductive Health Access Project: Here RHAP provides its top clinical and administrative tools for contraceptive services as well as patient information sheets. You can also sign up for Contraceptive Pearls, a monthly clinical e-newsletter highlighting best practices for contraceptive care.

Quick Start Algorithm
Reproductive Health Access Project: This clinical guide explains how health care providers can initiate birth control use on the day of an office visit, at any point in the patient's menstrual cycle. Studies show that women are three times more likely to adhere to contraception using this Quick Start method than the Sunday start method.

Medical Eligibility for Initiating Contraception: Absolute and Relative Contraindications
Reproductive Health Access Project: Updated in 2022, this reference tool is for health care providers who want to check a patient's medical eligibility for contraceptive methods. Information is based on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for initiating contraceptives.

Women's Health Policy: Emergency Contraception (EC)
KFF: This 2022 fact sheet briefly describes efficacy, timing, and availability of EC types and brands. Plan B and generics are available OTC to all women (including teens); ella requires a prescription. The copper-T IUD is the most effective form of EC when inserted no more than 5 days after unprotected sex.

Bedsider Providers
Power to Decide: Bedsider Providers offers educational materials, digital tools, and monthly research updates to help health care providers discuss birth control and sexual and reproductive health care with patients.

Abortion

Abortion
Reproductive Health Access Project: Here RHAP provides its top abortion resources as well as patient information sheets. Topics include manual vacuum abortion, medication abortion, self-managed abortion, telehealth, and more.

Abortion Finder
Power to Decide: AbortionFinder.org features the most comprehensive directory of trusted (and verified) abortion service providers in the United States. The site also provides patient information on medication abortion, surgical abortion, how to decide, and getting abortion pills online.

Medication Abortion: State Laws and Policies
Guttmacher Institute: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of mifepristone for early nonsurgical abortion in 2000. On this page, the Guttmacher Institute summarizes state laws and policies affecting the provision of medication abortion.

Parental Involvement in Minors' Abortions
Guttmacher Institute: Many states require parental involvement in a minor's decision to have an abortion. On this page, the Guttmacher Institute summarizes state requirements.

Sexually Transmitted Infections

Sexually Transmitted Infections Treatment Guidelines, 2021: Adolescents
CDC: Here the CDC presents STI screening and primary prevention recommendations for adolescents.

STD Webinars: CDC 2021 Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Treatment Guidelines Update Webinar
CDC: This webinar recording provides an overview of the 2021 updates to the CDC's 2015 STD Treatment Guidelines.

Addressing HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections among LGBTQ People: A Primer for Health Centers
National LBGTQIA+ Health Education Center: Health center clinicians can help address HIV and STIs among LGBTQ people by screening appropriately based on a comprehensive sexual history, providing culturally appropriate safer sex counseling, and offering biomedical prevention strategies, such as vaccinations and pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV (PrEP).

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccine Schedule and Dosing
CDC: The CDC recommends that clinicians avoid missed opportunities by strongly recommending the HPV vaccine to parents of 11-12 year-olds on the same day and in the same way that they recommend Tdap and meningococcal vaccines.

Talking to Parents about HPV Vaccine
CDC: Receiving a recommendation for vaccination from a clinician is the main reason parents choose to vaccinate their children. This document presents common questions and possible responses that clinicians can use to encourage vaccination.

MPV: What Healthcare Professionals Should Know
CDC: Information on monkeypox is provided here. See also Clinical Considerations for Monkeypox in Children and Adolescents.

Patient Education: Handouts and Resources

Your Birth Control Choices Fact Sheet
Reproductive Health Access Project: This patient fact sheet compares different birth control choices in a colorful and easy-to-read chart. Available in English, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Hindi, and French.

Safety Card: Hanging Out or Hooking Up?
Futures Without Violence: This card challenges teens to consider how their partner treats them, identifying dynamics of healthy relationships and signs that may indicate abuse. Tips are provided to those wanting to support a friend who may be facing relationship abuse. The card lists national toll-free hotlines for support specific to dating abuse, suicide prevention, teen runaway, rape, incest, and abuse. It may be distributed directly to youth, or stocked in bathrooms or health care exam rooms for people to take individually. Available in English and Spanish.

I think I'm pregnant. Now what?
Planned Parenthood Federation of America: On this website, PPFA provides teen-friendly, supportive information on all pregnancy options.

It's Your (Sex) Life
MTV: It's Your (Sex) Life is MTV's Emmy and Peabody Award-winning public information campaign to support young people in making responsible decisions about their sexual health. The campaign focuses on reducing unintended pregnancy, preventing the spread of STDs, including HIV/AIDS, and promoting open communication with partners and health care providers.

New York State Resources

Family Planning Benefit Program (FPBP)
New York State Department of Health: The FPBP is a public health insurance program for New Yorkers who need family planning services but may not be able to afford them. It is intended to increase access to confidential family planning services and to enable teens, women, and men to prevent and/or reduce the incidence of unintentional pregnancies. FPBP factsheets are available in English (PDF) and Spanish (PDF).

Right of Minors to Consent for STI and HIV Services: New York State
New York State Department of Health: This letter to NYS health care providers describes the right of minors to consent for STI and HIV prevention and treatment services without consent or knowledge of the parents or guardian.

FAQ: STI Billing and Minor's Consent to Prevention Services and HIV-related Services
New York State Department of Health: Updated in November 2019, this document describes the regulatory landscape with respect to STI testing and treatment in New York State.

An Overview of Consent to Reproductive Health Services by Young People
Guttmacher Institute: While minors should be encouraged to involve a parent or other trusted adult in sensitive health care decisions, in New York State adolescents may consent to contraceptive services, STD and HIV services, prenatal care, abortion, and adoption. There is no parental involvement law for abortion services in New York State.

Young People and Abortion in New York State
ACT for Youth: Here we provide a snapshot of post-Roe abortion law in New York State. Links to key documents are provided.

New York City STD Prevention Training Center (NYC PTC)
Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health: The NYC PTC is dedicated to increasing the sexual health knowledge and skills of medical health professionals in the prevention, diagnosis, screening, management, and treatment of STDs. The center offers classroom and web-based courses, hands-on training, clinical consults, and technical assistance to clinicians. One of eight regional training centers funded by the CDC, the NYC PTC serves New York State and beyond.

Expedited Partner Therapy (EPT) Guidelines for Health Care Providers in NYS for Chlamydia Trachomatis
New York State Department of Health: EPT is a strategy for treating the sex partner(s) of persons diagnosed with Chlamydia trachomatis (Ct). EPT allows health care providers to provide patients with medication or a prescription for Ct treatment to deliver to his or her sex partner(s) without a prior medical evaluation or clinical assessment of those partners.

Monkeypox for Healthcare Providers
New York State Department of Health: Reporting, testing, vaccination, and treatment information is provided here, along with links to resources.