SafeTalks

Teenage pregnancy, particularly those caused by unprotected sex, is one of the critical challenges that Filipino youths experience today (Young Adult Fertility and Sexual Study, 2021). In San Pablo City, a city composed of at least 70,000 youth population, approximately 4.21% of adolescent girls, which translates to 2,494 girls, were recorded to become pregnant in 2020 (ALPHA, 2020) and an additional 426 teenage pregnancy cases were recorded in 2021 (CHO Teenage Pregnancy Report, 2021).

Despite the efforts of the LGU to initiate face-to-face peer education programs on ASRH pre-pandemic, 66% of the San Pableño youth claim that birth control campaigns are lacking in most barangays (ALPHA, 2020). Moreover, the majority of the youth reported that their lack of comfortability and readiness to talk about ASRH may stem from the lack of reliable sources, programs, facilities, and educators in San Pablo City which may render the information that they gather online questionable.

Despite the increasing trend of social media to amplify health information, there has been no presence of mobile health interventions to promote sexual and reproductive health among the San Pableño youth. SafeTalks is one of the key subprograms of Healthy Kabataan 2025 that aims to develop a community-designed mobile health intervention and craft local sexual and reproductive health-related policies to prevent teenage pregnancy in San Pablo City. Designing a mHealth intervention built through the lived experiences of the youth is a significant impetus in breaking the stigma in the conservative culture of San Pablo City and facilitating their desired health-seeking behaviors to prevent the further increase of teenage pregnancy cases in the community. In this information age, it is high time for our communities to start recognizing the development of youth-led innovative, contextualized, and responsive health interventions aimed to safeguard and promote the health and well-being of our youth to help them achieve a better quality of life.