Lessons learned from a community-academic partnership addressing adolescent pregnancy prevention in Filipino American families.

BACKGROUND: Filipino Americans have more adolescent pregnancies than other Asian-Pacific Islanders (APIs). Few community-academic collaborations have addressed adolescent pregnancy prevention in this community.

OBJECTIVES: We sought to describe the lessons learned from and impact of a community-based teen pregnancy prevention program for Filipino Americans implemented by a Filipina pediatrics resident.

METHODS: We formed a community-academic partnership between the Filipino Youth Coalition, a community-based organization (CBO) in San Jose, California, and the Stanford School of Medicine's Pediatric Advocacy Program. We developed a culturally tailored parent-teen conference addressing adolescent pregnancy prevention in Filipino Americans. We qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated this intervention by collecting both pre- and post-conference data using a convenience sample design.

LESSONS LEARNED: Engaging particular aspects of Filipino culture (i.e., religion and intergenerational differences) helped to make this community-academic partnership successful. For physicians-in-training who are conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR), project challenges may include difficulties in building and maintaining academic- community relationships, struggles to promote sustainability, and conflicting goals of "community insiders" and "academic outsiders." Authors offer insights and implications for residents interested in practicing CBPR.

CONCLUSION: CBPR is a key tool for exploring health issues in understudied populations. CBPR experiences can provide meaningful educational opportunities for physicians-in-training and can build sustained capacity in CBOs. They can also help residents to develop analytic skills, directly affect the health of the communities they serve, and, for minority physicians, give back to the communities they call home.