ORIGINAL PAPER Social Network Recruitment for Yo Puedo: An Innovative Sexual Health Intervention in an Underserved Urban Neighborhood—Sample and Design Implications Alexandra M. Minnis • Evan vanDommelen-Gonzalez • Ellen Luecke • Helen Cheng • William Dow • Sergio Bautista-Arredondo • Nancy S. Padian Published online: 31 October 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract Most existing evidence-based sexual health interventions focus on individual-level behav- ior, even though there is substantial evidence that highlights the influential role of social environments in shaping adolescents’ behaviors and reproductive health outcomes. We developed Yo Puedo, a com- bined conditional cash transfer and life skills inter- vention for youth to promote educational attainment, job training, and reproductive health wellness that we then evaluated for feasibility among 162 youth aged 16–21 years in a predominantly Latino community in San Francisco, CA. The intervention targeted youth’s social networks and involved recruitment and ran- domization of small social network clusters. In this paper we describe the design of the feasibility study and report participants’ baseline characteristics. Fur- thermore, we examined the sample and design impli- cations of recruiting social network clusters as the unit of randomization. Baseline data provide evidence that we successfully enrolled high risk youth using a social network recruitment approach in community and school-based settings. Nearly all participants (95 %) were high risk for adverse educational and reproduc- tive health outcomes based on multiple measures of low socioeconomic status (81 %) and/or reported high risk behaviors (e.g., gang affiliation, past pregnancy, recent unprotected sex, frequent substance use; 62 %). We achieved variability in the study sample through heterogeneity in recruitment of the index participants, whereas the individuals within the small social networks of close friends demonstrated substantial homogeneity across sociodemographic and risk profile characteristics. Social networks recruitment was fea- sible and yielded a sample of high risk youth willing to enroll in a randomized study to evaluate a novel sexual health intervention. Keywords Community-based intervention Á Gang violence Á Hispanic/Latino adolescents and young adults Introduction Rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infec- tions (STIs) among US adolescents aged 15–19 remain higher than in any developed nation, with substantial health and socioeconomic consequences (Patel & Sen, 2012). Although teen pregnancy rates have declined A. M. Minnis (&) Á E. vanDommelen-Gonzalez Á E. Luecke Á H. Cheng Women’s Global Health Imperative, RTI International, San Francisco, CA, USA e-mail: aminnis@rti.org A. M. Minnis Á E. vanDommelen-Gonzalez Á W. Dow Á N. S. Padian School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA S. Bautista-Arredondo National Public Health Institute, Cuernavaca, Mexico 123 J Primary Prevent (2015) 36:51–64 DOI 10.1007/s10935-014-0375-y