AN advocacy campaign dubbed as #SoMe4AYRH or social media for adolescent and youth reproductive health, an interactive learning tool on promoting and educating the young populace with accurate information on responsible sexuality and reproductive health, was launched Wednesday, July 25, at Abreeza Mall, Davao City.
Josephine J. Villafuerte, City Health Office (CHO) head, the lead office on this campaign acknowledged that most of the youth nowadays spend more time on internet and other social networking platforms to express themselves, and thus, they want to take advantage of it to give the youth easy access to reproductive health information and to raise awareness.
“In the recent development, social media use has extended from just connecting people and sharing experiences to being a tool to deliver health messages across population. In this light, the city population Division of Davao City Health Office will be supporting the Use of Social Media and Social Networking Sites for Adolescents and Youth (AY) Advocacy with the help Mindanao JHPIEGO,” she said.
This is also their way of building opportunities in using new technologies to reach more AY with sexuality and Reproductive health messages, recognizing the connectedness of AY through the new media and to address the spike of Teenage Pregnancy, STI/HIV/Aids and teenage suicide.
“This is to provide youth access top youth-friendly, youth responsive information and services,” she added.
The #SoMe4AYRH is a social media enhancement of the current adolescent youth program of the Department of Health (DOH) launched nationwide which shall be implemented by the local government units.
It aims “to provide easier access to information on reproductive health concerns of adolescents through the use of the known social media platform Facebook wherein teens and adolescents can reach out to service providers who can give them information and facts about reproductive health as well as refer them to adolescent clinics ready to cater to their needs.”
The City Population Division believes that social media has become one of the major contributor in the rise of teenage pregnancies because of its easy access which provides the adolescents a wide array of contacts in engaging themselves into sexual activities.
“This program was established to address a certain problem, and we think that the adolescents should be running the social media campaigns because they are much well-versed with the internet language, and for the campaigns to be appealing also,” CPD head Jeff Fuentes said.
Based on the National Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) in 2017 released by the Philippine Statistics Authority, Davao region got the highest number of adolescent birth rate across the country.
The Adolescent birth rate, in 2016, they recorded 15,357 and it was broken down to Davao City with 4,130 – the highest incidents, followed by Davao del Sur (3,704), Davao del Norte (3,216), Compostela Valley (2,594) and Davao Oriental (1,740). They have no data yet as of 2016 for Davao Occidental since it was still integrated to Davao del Sur.