91福利

Project Leads

Elizabeth Saewyc, Abdulai Fatawu

Team Members
Mauricio Coronel Villalobos; Monica Rana; Marie Louise Umwangange; Daniel Ji

Cluster: Immigrant Adolescent and Youth Health

Migrant youth in Canada face uneven access to culturally safe sexual health education, contraception, and care. This project examines sexual health trends and disparities among migrant adolescents, including differences by gender or sex, sexual orientation, and region of origin, to inform more equitable adolescent sexual health policy, practice, and knowledge mobilization.

The objective of this project is to analyze trends and gaps in sexual health outcomes among migrant adolescents, with attention to gender or sex, sexual orientation, age group, and region of origin. The project aims to identify where disparities persist or widen, interpret findings with youth advisory input, and translate results into manuscripts and community-facing materials that support culturally relevant, safe, and accessible sexual health education and services.

1. Have sexual health behaviours and outcomes among migrant youth changed over time?
2. Do sexual health outcomes differ by gender or sex, age group, sexual orientation, and region of origin among migrant adolescents?
3. What structural or access-related barriers may help explain patterns in contraception use, STI diagnosis, forced sex, and other outcomes?
4. What correlates and social determinants help explain health inequities in sexual health among migrant youth populations, especially LGBTQ+ migrant youth, racialized migrant youth, and refugee youth?
5. Can youth advisory feedback inform interpretation and knowledge translation?

This project analyzes data from three main sources: the British Columbia Adolescent Health Survey (BCAHS), the Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey (CTYHS), and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Analyses include trend and gap analysis across survey waves, disaggregated by migrant status, gender or sex, sexual orientation, age group, and region of origin where possible. Outcomes include sexual experience, oral sex, forced sex, sexual abuse, age at first sex, partner age, number of partners, substance use before sex, pregnancy, contraception use, and STI diagnosis. Analyses will also examine correlates and social determinants such as discrimination, violence, social support and school connectedness, family and neighbourhood support, access to health care, deprivation, and food insecurity. Findings will be interpreted with youth advisory input.

• Youth advisory group

Ongoing. Additional in-depth analyses are underway to understand risk and protective factors for migrant youth sexual health outcomes, including analyses among ethnoculturally diverse youth using HBSC data. The first group of focus is South Asian migrant youth.

Migrant youth; Sexual health; Contraception; Health equity