Effective Interventions to Prevent Repeat Pregnancies in Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Repeat adolescent pregnancy is a public health problem worldwide. Different interventions aimed at increasing the use of contraception and preventing repeat pregnancies have been implemented and their effectiveness has been evaluated. This systematic review evaluates the results of the efficacy of diverse interventions for contraceptive use and prevention of repeat pregnancies in adolescents. A search was conducted for articles published from 1985 to 2018 in the PubMed, Scopus, EBSCOhost, Web of Science, and ProQuest databases, including interventions with adolescents 15 to 19 years of age who were pregnant, postpartum or had a history of pregnancy. Significant results were found for an increase in contraceptive use and prevention of repeat adolescent pregnancy, leading to the conclusion that there are reports of high methodological quality multicomponent interventions for the prevention of repeat adolescent pregnancy that could be tested in other socio-economic and cultural contexts.