Invest in adolescents and young people: it pays

Abstract

This year’s Women Deliver conference made a strong call for investing in the health and development of adolescents and young people. It highlighted the unique problems faced by adolescent girls and young women–some of the most vulnerable and neglected individuals in the world–and stressed the importance of addressing their needs and rights, not only for their individual benefit, but also to achieve global goals such as reducing maternal mortality and HIV infection.In response to an invitation from the editors of Reproductive Health, we-the sixteen coauthors of this commentary–put together key themes that reverberated throughout the conference, on the health and development needs of adolescents and young people, and promising solutions to meet them.1. Investing in adolescents and young people is crucial for ensuring health, creating prosperity and fulfilling human rights.2. Gender inequality contributes to many health and social problems. Adolescent girls and boys, and their families and communities, should be challenged and supported to change inequitable gender norms.– Child marriage utterly disempowers girls. It is one of the most devastating manifestations of gender discrimination.– Negative social and cultural attitudes towards menstruation constrain the lives of millions of girls. This may well establish the foundation for lifelong discomfort felt by girls about their bodies and reticence in seeking help when problems arise.3. Adolescents need comprehensive, accurate and developmentally appropriate sexuality education. This will provide the bedrock for attitude formation and decision making.4. Adolescent-centered health services can prevent sexual and reproductive health problems and detect and treat them if and when they occur.5. National governments have the authority and the responsibility to address social and cultural barriers to the provision of sexual and reproductive health education and services for adolescents and young people.6. Adolescents should be involved more meaningfully in national and local actions intended to meet their needs and respond to their problems.7. The time to act is now. We know more now than ever before about the health and development needs of adolescents and young people, as well as the solutions to meeting those needs.

Opinions of Health Professionals on Tailoring Reproductive Health Services to the Needs of Adolescents

“…This can be through availability of tailored sex education programs coupled with appropriate service provision. There are economic and public health costs to not investing in adolescent sexual and reproductive health [31, 32]. Our study results are similar to that of Bankole et al, (2010) which found that access to sexual and reproductive health services including sexual education was still a challenge, worldwide [13].…”

The world has much to do to achieve the International Conference on Population and Development's adolescent-health objectives

“…And adolescentcentered sexual and reproductive health services can prevent health problems and enable adolescents with health problems to get back to good health [9].…”

Healthcare workers’ behaviours and personal determinants affecting sexual and reproductive healthcare service provision to adolescents in South Africa

“…The findings of small proportion of girls using modern contraceptives, such as birth control pills is surprising given the fact that contraceptives are provided free of charge in SA [Schnieder et al, 1999;Wilkinson et al, 2001;DoH, 2002]. However, this can be explained by (1) the poor knowledge of contraceptives among adolescents in general in SA [Kaufman et al, 2001;Mchunu et al, 2013], and (2) the limited availability of, and access to sexual and reproductive health services targeted at adolescents [Chandra' Mouli et al, 2013;Somba et al, 2014]. Furthermore, the cultural or societal, structural, and individual factors associated with the use of contraceptives are some of the barriers for contraceptive use [Somba et al, 2014;Watts et al, 2014].…”

“…Nurses also acknowledged the limited knowledge of their adolescent clients regarding SRH services, as well as the need for more counseling with regards to condom use. Previous research in SSA at large, including SA, has also identified the need for more SRH information and contraceptive knowledge improvement as necessary information adolescents need to be provided with in order for them to make informed decisions regarding their SRH needs [Wood et al, 2006;Holt et al, 2012;Atuyambe et al, 2015;Ochako et al, 2015;Chandra-Mouli et al, 2014;Chandra-Mouli et al, 2013]. Furthermore, nurses emphasized the importance of being sensitive when dealing with their adolescent clients.…”

“…Besides the health consequences of teenage pregnancy, psychosocial consequences also affect adolescents, sometimes throughout their adult life. Such psychosocial consequences include mental disturbances, reduced future employment opportunities, as many adolescents are often forced to dropout from school in order to care for their newborns [Neal et al, 2015;WHO, 2014;Chandra-Mouli et al, 2013;Black et al, 2012;Neal et al, 2012, Jewkes et al, 2009. Thus, early childbearing increases the risks for maternal and neonatal mortality and therefore should be prevented [Neal et al, 2015].…”