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Background: Adolescent pregnancies have both positive and negative consequences that have an impact on the health and well-being of girls. High incidence rate of adolescent pregnancies occur mostly in disadvantaged areas and in families with low socioeconomic status. Factors associated with early childbearing are sexual violence and abuse, improper or no use of contraceptive methods due to no access to information and sexual health services, insufficient communication and counseling with families and health professionals. Health professionals can play a key role in supporting girls to fulfill their sexual and reproductive rights, including their right to a safe and pleasurable sexual life and to decide when (if at all) to get pregnant. In this study protocol we will apply the Right approach to Sexual and Reproductive Health framework, to explore and analyze health professionals’ perspectives about adolescent pregnancies, and their work experiences with the purpose of providing suggestions that can contribute to improve the quality of sexual and reproductive health services for pregnant adolescents at the Public Institution of Mother and Child.

Objectives: The objective of the thesis is to describe a protocol for a qualitative study, analyzing health professionals’ perspectives and working experiences with adolescent pregnancies in the Republic of Moldova. By using Rights approach to Sexual and Reproductive Health, the researchers will gain in-depth understanding about how health workers perceive girls’ sexual and reproductive health and rights, and how this influences the services they provide to pregnant adolescents.

Methodology: The study will be conducted in the capital of the Republic of Moldova, Chisinau, at the Public Medico-Sanitary Institution for Scientific Research in the field of Mother and Child Health Care. A qualitative methodology with in-depth face-to-face interviews with health professionals, will be applied. An inductive thematic analysis approach will be used during data analysis. The findings will be arranged into themes that will reflect the Right approach to Sexual and Reproductive Health concepts, while remaining open to new emerging fields. Actions will be taken in order to enhance the trustworthiness of the study. To increase dependability, the study will use an emergent design, and triangulation of researchers in order to increase credibility. To increase transferability, the researchers will provide a detailed description about study setting, data collection and analysis, and reflexivity will strengthen confirmability of the findings.