Adolescent Sexually Transmitted Infection Screening in the Emergency Department

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are highly prevalent among adolescents. Clinical practices related to screening, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of STIs among adolescents are suboptimal. There is a need to expand our screening programs to nontraditional healthcare settings such as emergency departments (ED) and to determine the most efficient and cost-effective method for providing this screening. The goal of this study is to leverage our recent insights obtained from single center ED-based adolescent GC/CT screening research and apply them across a national pediatric ED research network to determine the most clinically effective and cost-effective screening approach for adolescents when implemented into a real-world clinical setting through a pragmatic trial. This will be accomplished through a network of children's hospital EDs with a track record of robust research collaboration (Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network or PECARN). This intervention will rely on an innovative approach that electronically integrates patient-reported data to guide clinical decision support. The investigators will apply human factors modeling methods to perform ED workflow evaluations at each participating pediatric ED to determine the most efficient way to integrate the screening process into clinical care. The investigators will then conduct a comparative effectiveness pragmatic trial of targeted STI screening versus universally offered STI screening through electronic integration of patient reported data for provision of clinical decision support. The investigators will develop decision analytic models to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of targeted screening compared to universally offered screening.