Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Community Mobilization: A Community-Wide Approach to Promoting Adolescent Sexual Health

2017; Children at Risk; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.58464/2155-5834.1342

2155-5834

Sam E. Greenberg, Laura E. Davis, Cheryl Tutt, Tonya Katcher,

Youth Development and Social Support

Community mobilization is a strategy that organizes a community across sectors for long-term change, and is one way for communities to provide supports for young people to make healthy sexual choices. In the context of teen pregnancy, community mobilization can address the interconnected web of factors that influence teen sexual attitudes by bringing together parents, educators, health care practitioners, young people, and other key community stakeholders to address the issue jointly. From 2014 to 2016, Advocates for Youth, through a cooperative agreement with the US Office of Adolescent Health, provided financial support and capacity-building assistance to three communities to address teen pregnancy prevention using a community mobilization approach. In this article, we define community mobilization, describe key benefits, provide an overview of the process used by the three communities to mobilize key constituents, and share key lessons learned from the project. These lessons learned support the central importance of investing time, energy, and resources in a community mobilization process. Funders should consider that the life cycle of community mobilization requires a significant up-front investment of time and resources to ensure a sufficient foundation of relationship cultivation, team building, and planning.