The Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) conducted a review and program scan of peer-reviewed and grey literature on reproductive health (RH) of adolescents and youth in urban areas to explore the behavioral drivers, barriers and contextual factors and identify SBC interventions for voluntary family planning and reproductive health education. The findings highlight promising practices and synthesize lessons learned, and offer insight into the elements that may yield more positive results for behavior change among urban youth.

The literature search involved both peer-reviewed journals and grey literature, and addressed a range of factors including adolescent and youth RH behaviors, contraceptive practices, condom use, unintended pregnancy, sexual transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS, while also paying attention to gender dynamics. The peer review search focused on documentation from the past 10 years and queried the following three databases: PubMed, Scopus and POPLine. The gray literature search was conducted using the following websites: WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF, The World Bank, The Communication Initiative, Population Council, Interagency Youth Working Groups, The urban Reproductive Health Initiative, and the Guttmacher Institute.

The database includes over 120 peer-reviewed and grey literature articles from the review that explore the behavioral drivers, barriers and contextual factors on reproductive health of adolescents and youth in urban areas. The complete literature review and executive summary are available.