Mentoring Interventions and the Impact of Protective Assets on the Reproductive Health of Adolescent Girls and Young Women

Mentoring interventions have demonstrated a positive impact on a variety of youth development outcomes, including the protective assets needed to circumvent poor reproductive health (RH) outcomes. The purpose of this review was to understand the types of mentoring programs for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) that have demonstrated effectiveness in improving protective assets, and/or, RH knowledge, intentions, behaviors, or outcomes themselves. The few interventions that followed a group-based model demonstrated more promise; evaluations of this model demonstrated a positive impact on RH knowledge and behavior, academic achievement, financial behavior, and social networks, as well as reductions in the experience of violence. Group-based mentoring programs demonstrated the most promise in building AGYW's protective assets and improving their RH outcomes. The most successful interventions consisted of multiple components, including mentoring, that sought to directly improve AGYW's protective assets and met with more frequency over a longer duration.