Sexual health work in a playground: lessons learnt from the evaluation of a small-scale sexual health project.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a sexual health outreach programme in an adventure playground. DESIGN: A qualitative approach to evaluation is appropriate for a sexual health project where outcomes are unpredictable, difficult to define in numerical terms and the small scale of the intervention means that an impact on indices such as teenage pregnancy rates is unlikely. The data collection techniques used were the outreach worker's diary, questionnaires and interviews with youth workers, and a focus group with young people. RESULTS: Work in young people's leisure space requires flexible working in disrupted environments and a responsive approach to diverse individual needs. The outreach worker successfully engaged boys and girls in sexual health discussions. As a result of the project, youth workers' confidence in discussing sexual health issues and ability to refer to the clinic increased. CONCLUSION: Clinical staff providing a sexual health outreach service for young people offer a knowledge of sexual health and local clinical services and an opportunity to build positive relationships between clinics and local community organisations. The relationships help youth workers to raise sexual health issues with young people and to refer problems appropriately. Clinical staff doing outreach work may require additional skills to work in young people's leisure space, for example, the ability to negotiate the content of sessions and to tolerate disruption. A qualitative approach to evaluation effectively documents a range of project outcomes, including those which were unforeseen and which could not have been documented through the collection of numerical data. It also provides a detailed description of the process of project implementation, which aids replication.

Safer sex and reproductive choice: findings from "positive women: voices and choices" in Zimbabwe.

Positive Women: Voices and Choices was an advocacy-research project developed by the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS to explore the impact of HIV/AIDS on women's sexual and reproductive lives, challenge the violation of their rights and advocate improvements in policy and services. The project in Zimbabwe, the first one in three countries, was carried out from 1998 to 2001. This article presents selected findings from the Zimbabwe research report. It shows that HIV-positive women were unaware they were at risk before an HIV diagnosis, and that gender norms and economic dependence on husbands/partners restricted women's ability to control their sexual and reproductive lives. Prejudices that HIV-positive women should not be sexually active or have children meant women did not disclose their status to health workers, making it difficult for their needs to be acknowledged or addressed. Condom use was considered inappropriate in marriage. Younger childless women wanted to become pregnant, often in spite of previous miscarriage and stillbirths. Women with several children wanted to avoid further pregnancies, and contraceptive and condom use increased markedly after HIV diagnosis, especially among those attending support groups. Safe abortion was almost entirely inaccessible, though technically the law would have permitted it. Better economic opportunities for women, and integrated pregnancy and delivery care, family planning, STI and HIV-related services are needed which take account of HIV-positive women's needs.