SEXPAIRS

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends interactive and participatory sexuality education. At the French level, the main focus of the national sexual health strategy is to promote sexual health, particularly among young people, particularly by using new communication tools. To do this, online health communities offer individuals the opportunity to receive information, advice and support from their peers. However, previous research has not yet established strong evidence on the health benefits of virtual communities and peer-to-peer online support (across multiple health topics). The effect of online support groups on health outcomes remains unclear, including a lack of methodological construction. Research must observe the conditions and factors (collective or individual) influencing the results. For this, randomized controlled trials can help evaluate which components of a complex intervention contribute to an effect The Sexpairs project is a Population Health Intervention Research, aiming at promoting positive long-term health behaviors on a young audience (general population). This project is the result of a common reflection on the state of the art and the advent of digital social media, given the lack of evidence-based data on health promotion interventions among peers and on the Internet. Our Intervention Research project aims to evaluate among an online cohort the effectiveness of a participatory online community intervention for the promotion of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) of adolescents and young adults (AYA), and how a new conceptual model makes it possible to change their practices beyond attitudes and improve positive behaviors. We would like to test an innovative youth peer intervention model by: 1) observing how peers can help build and animate a community that helps change behavior (peer-led); 2) observing how young people can interact with each other to educate themselves and further develop their level of information which determines positive behaviors (peer education) (peer-led ? peer education) ? Two steps to understand the effect of "participation" To do so, we will build a web-based cohort of AYA among whom we will test (at 4 months of longitudinal follow-up) the peer-led participatory online community intervention (intervention n°1). After these first 4 months, the entirety of the cohort (including the control group) will be enrolled in the participatory online community. We will then test within the whole participatory online community cohort an additional specific interactive peer education intervention, namely a "shared construction of knowledge in subgroups" for AYA (intervention n ° 2). This online community cohort could be the ground for other specific interventions implementing new interactive models for youth empowerment. Our project has an original approach mobilizing youth participation on several levels. At the level of research, we want to solicit young people in a Community-Based Research Participatory Model (CBPR) and include them in the different stages of our project, from conception to evaluation. We will then be able to build an intervention that is as close as possible to the concerns and expectations of young people.