Older adolescent girls are disproportionately affected by intimate partner violence. Pregnancy complications and unsafe abortions are the leading causes of death among 15-19-year-old girls. Most adolescent mortality and morbidity is preventable or treatable, but adolescents face specific barriers in accessing health information and services.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is releasing the second edition of its Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!) guidance. The document aims to equip governments to respond to the health and well-being challenges, opportunities and needs of adolescents. The guidance provides the latest available data on adolescent health and well-being. It also outlines an updated ...
Adolescent health is starting to attract the attention it deserves, and is increasingly prominent in global health initiatives. This includes the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health, areas such as mental health (young people’s mental health is the theme of 2018’s World Mental Health Day on 10 October) and management of sexually transmitted infections ...
Investing in adolescent health ensures triple dividends in terms of health during adolescence, health during later adulthood (by preventing risk factors for chronic conditions like non-communicable diseases) as well as health of the future generation (by ensuring health of the offspring of women who themselves remained healthy).
In many ways adolescent development drives the changes in the disease burden between childhood to adulthood – for example, the increase with age in sexual and reproductive health problems, mental illness and injuries.
Adolescent health in the Western Pacific Adolescents – young people between the ages of 10 and 19 years – are often thought of as a healthy group. However, their rates of reduction of death has been much slower than other age groups.