Parents' Sources of Adolescent Sexual Health Information and Their Interest in Resources From Primary Care

OBJECTIVE: To examine sources of information used by parents to facilitate parent-adolescent communication about sexual and reproductive health (SRH), parents' preferences for receiving SRH information through primary care, and factors associated with parents' interest in primary-care-based SRH information (ie, resources recommended or offered in the pri-mary care setting). METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, a nationally represen-tative sample of 11-17-year-old adolescents and their parents (n = 1005 dyads) were surveyed online; 993 were retained for these analyses. Parents were asked about their use of 11 resour-ces to help them talk with their adolescents about SRH and rated the likelihood of using specific primary-care-based resources. We used multivariable logistic regression to exam-ine characteristics associated with parent interest in primary-care-based SRH resources. RESULTS: Only 25.8% of parents reported receiving at least a moderate amount of SRH information from primary care; half (53.3%) reported receiving no SRH information from their adolescent's provider. Parents received the most information from personal connections (eg, spouse/partner, friends). Most parents (59.1%) reported being likely to utilize a primary-care-based resource for SRH information. Parents who previously received SRH information from primary care sources had greater odds of reporting they would be likely to utilize a pri-mary-care-based resources (AOR = 4.06, 95% CI: 2.55-6.46). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides insights into parents' sources of information for communicating with their adoles-cents about SRH and ways primary care practices might increase support for parents in having SRH conversations with their adolescents. Future studies are needed to establish clini-cal best practices for promoting parent-adolescent communica-tion about SRH.