Engaging Pediatric Infectious Disease Providers in Sexual Health Training: a Strategy for Success

Project

The New York City STD/HIV Prevention Training Center (PTC) is a CDC-funded training center that provides STI/HIV education to clinical providers. To prioritize a pediatric provider audience, the PTC partnered with the national Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) to offer monthly virtual trainings to its membership, which consists of attendings, fellows and residents throughout the US.

Issue

Pediatric providers care for adolescents, a population disproportionately affected by STIs. CDC estimates that youth ages 15-24 years account for half of the 26 million new STIs each year in the US. Evidence-based guidelines are widely available, but recognized screening gaps, such as low chlamydia screening rates exist. Most pediatric infectious diseases programs do not specifically train on STI care and management, thus PIDS partnered with the PTC to create a national education platform for its members of all provider levels.

Results

Seven trainings were held in year one (2021-2022 academic year). Topics presented included sexual history and screening tests, cervicitis/dysuria, vaginal discharge, mycoplasma/ureaplasma/PID, syphilis, congenital syphilis and rectal infections. Implementation facilitators included: clinical faculty expertise, engaged pediatric ID audience, broad geographical reach of providers and diversity in provider type. Implementation barriers included: possible Zoom fatigue, varying audience experience levels due to mix of provider levels and time constraints preventing more discussion per session. An end-of-year evaluation was conducted via Qualtrics to assess demographics and satisfaction and results included: 69.6% of participants were attendings, 8% residents, 4% fellows and 13% other (N=23).The mean number of sessions attended was 3, with some attending 6 of 7 sessions. 68% found the discussion section of the trainings very valuable; 32% somewhat valuable (N=22). For future events, 31% wanted more polling questions, 14% more lecture, 14% more discussion and 14% no changes were needed.

Lessons Learned

Working with a national professional medical organization is an effective strategy to engage a priority provider audience for sexual health training. Given the audience, Zoom was an effective format to provide training, facilitating reach to both a broad geographical audience as well as a diverse provider background. The consistent audience of attendings shows a need for this type of training to all provider levels.