Reach out and address the needs: approaches to promote reproductive health service use among young migrants in urban China

According to 2010 population census, the size of 15-24 age group is about 228 million in China. There is a large potential unmet need among this group regarding reproductive health service, especially among young migrants (about 70 million). Sexual and reproductive health projects focusing on young adults in China have been carried out for more than a decade, from several pilot sites in early 2000s to a larger scale in recent years. Efforts have been made to empower young workers with approaches such as life skill training and peer education. This paper will first review experiences and lessons learnt from youth reproductive health projects among migrants in urban China, then we will introduce a most recent case study in three sites based on site visits, focus group discussion, and in-depth interview, to analyze reproductive health needs among young migrants, service available and gaps. Experiences from different sites imply that approaches should be specifically designed to fit the local situation and to serve different sub-groups, and participation of youth is one of the important factor to support the program be effective. However there is still a big challenge for the existing service system work with youth, especially unmarried ones. This paper will propose more specific approaches for each site to address different needs.