Staffing a Contraceptive Service for Adolescents: The Importance of Sex, Race, and Age

Since there are data to indicate that the composition of clinic staff is important in attracting and maintaining contact with adolescents seeking contraceptive services, in this paper the importance of age, sex, and ethnicity of counselors and medical providers is examined. Female clients of the Young Adult Clinic at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, New York City--most of them low-income blacks or Hispanics--were asked to complete questionnaires. The 150 respondents, aged 16-21 years, used a 4-point rating scale of very important = 4 to not important at all = 1. The findings indicated that the sex of the counselor and examiner was more important to female teenagers than ethnicity or age. Clinic administrators seeking to provide contraceptive services to teenagers should make an effort to include at least one female counselor and medical provider. However none of these characteristics was very important to the majority of patients. These findings are discussed in the context of the literature on the provision of contraceptive services to teenagers and on patient preferences for counselors or therapists in general.