Background: Adolescent sexual activity is a tremendous health care issue in the United States. Every year, roughly nine million new sexually transmitted infections occur among teens and young adults. By their 19th birthday, seven in 10 teens of both sexes have had intercourse. The United States continues to have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. Foreground: Even when parents provide information, their knowledge about contraception or other sexual health topics may often be inaccurate or incomplete. Strong evidence suggests that comprehensive approaches to sex education help young people both to withstand the pressures to have sex too soon and to have healthy, responsible and mutually protective relationships when they do become sexually active. Many pediatricians say they feel ill-prepared or uncomfortable serving as sexuality educators. Yet, many are asked to do so, because of their close contact with children and families. Methods: Realizing the ramifications of adolescent sexual activity and lacking a consistent, comprehensive sex education curriculum, the health care professionals at a private, pediatric practice opted to standardize the content of the sex education lecture provided to teenagers and their parents during routine well examinations using a pre-published tool endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. EBP Framework: An integrative model was utilized to guide this change process. Lewin’s Unfreezing-Change-Refreezing Model for change enhanced the Team Strategies and Tools for Enhanced Performance and Patient Safety (TSTEPPS) Model by identifying behaviors over the change process that influenced outcome. Findings/Results: Utilization of the pre-published guideline during the patient encounter served as both a reliable starting point to begin a discussion about sexuality and as a reminder to the health care provider of the six subtopics, which needed to be addressed during the standardized sex lecture. The pre-published guideline did not prove to be a meaningful catalyst to get health care providers talking more about sexuality. Conclusions/Recommendations: Even in health care, the topic of sexuality continues to be a universally shunned topic. More research is needed to identify factors which inhibit a medical provider from deliverig a comprehensive sex education lecture.
