Background Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many challenges in adolescent health have been exacerbated including increased cases of early marriages, domestic violence, higher rates of anxiety and depression, and reduced access to sexual and reproductive health services for adolescents. This study examines the impacts of the pandemic on adolescent health services utilization and potential adaptations in the Philippines. Methods The data used in this study was from a rapid telephone assessment survey of 148 adolescent-friendly health facilities (rural health units) in the Philippines. We employed a mixed-methods research approach comprising both quantitative and qualitative analyses in three phases. First, we conducted a descriptive analysis of the status of adolescent healthcare access and utilization during COVID-19. Next, we examined using multivariate ordered logistic regressions how staff availability and adolescent health (AH) service provision modalities influenced AH service utilization in terms of the average number of adolescents served per week during compared to before the pandemic. We also conducted a complementing qualitative analysis of the challenges and corresponding adaptive solutions to ensuring continuity of AH services in facilities. Results We find that two months into the pandemic, 79% of adolescent-friendly trained staff were reporting for duty and 64% of facilities reported no staff disruptions. However, only 13% of facilities were serving the same number of adolescents or greater than before COVID-19. The use of more modalities for AH service provision (including telehealth) by facilities was significantly associated with increased likelihood to report serving the same number of adolescent or greater than before COVID-19 compared to those who used only one modality. Conclusion Investments in multiple modalities of care provision, such as telehealth could improve AH services utilization and help sustain connection with adolescents during shocks, including future outbreaks or other stressors that limit physical access to health facilities.

Since the introduction of COVID-19 in early 2020, COVID-19 stigma has persisted on social media. Stigma, a social process where individuals or groups are labeled, stereotyped, and separated, can result in misinformation, discrimination, and violence. The body of research on COVID-19 stigma is growing, but addressing stigma on social media remains challenging because of the enormous volume and diversity of rapidly changing content. This three-part methodology offers a standardized approach for generating (1) a relevant and manageable social media sample for stigma identification and research, (2) a categorization process to organize the sample, and (3) a systematic coding method for classifying stigma within the sample. An application of the methodology generated a curated sample of 138,998 posts from Twitter and Reddit, organized according to key stigma domain, key terms, frequency of terms, and hashtag occurrence. A subset of 711 posts were selected for the content analysis and analyzed based on the key stigma domains, distinguishing between intentional and unintentional stigma. This methodology has the potential to facilitate comprehensive social media stigma research through simplified sample generation and stigma identification processes and offers the possibility of adaptation to address other types of social media stigma, beyond COVID-19.