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This sexual and reproductive health (SRH) peer education programme was developed as part of the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) Leveraging Partnerships to Achieve the Goals of South Africa’s HIV & AIDS and STI National Strategic Plan 2012–16, otherwise known as Keeping Girls in School. The aim of this component of the programme is to shift social norms and change sexual behaviour by reinforcing and supporting the SRH messages received via the curriculum in order to increase retention and reduce the risk of HIV infection and teenage pregnancy.
Many unhealthy behaviors often begin during adolescence and represent major public health challenges. Substance abuse has a major impact on individuals, families, and communities, as its effects are cumulative, contributing to costly social, physical, and mental health problems. The authors conducted an overview of systematic reviews to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to prevent substance abuse among adolescents. They report findings from a total of 46 systematic reviews focusing on interventions for smoking/tobacco use, alcohol use, drug use, and combined substance abuse. …
Background: Unintended pregnancy among adolescents represents an important public health challenge in high-income countries, as well as middle and low-income countries. Numerous prevention strategies such as health education, skills-building and improving accessibility to contraceptives have been employed by countries across the world, in an effort to address this problem. However, there is uncertainty regarding the effects of these interventions, hence the need to review the evidence-base. …
Mitigating HIV and AIDS among youth has been a major policy agenda both internationally and nationally, within Tanzania. Two concerns associated with mitigation efforts are increasing sexual activity at young ages and a burgeoning population of out-of-school youth whom poverty, lack of supervision, and unemployment seem to push into alternative life patterns that present risks to their health. This situation poses a serious challenge for Tanzania, where half the population is categorised as young.
Story of a national program that has been a school for social, academic and professional development for thousands of peer educators and government employees and throughout the years, the program has freed local communities from the stranglehold of taboos on sex, education and the role of young people in society. …
Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has gained global recognition as a vital effort to empower adolescents and young people; enable them to improve and protect their health, well-being and dignity; and support them in developing critical thinking skills, citizenship, and equal, healthy and positive relationships. This toolkit offers guidance and resources on ways to deliver CSE for children, adolescents, and youth in non-formal and formal settings and encourage other stakeholders to develop and implement CSE policies and programmes.
International policy agreements, along with emerging evidence about factors influencing programme effectiveness, have led to calls for a shift in sexuality education toward an approach that places gender norms and human rights at its heart. Little documentation exists, however, about the degree to which this shift is actually taking place on the ground or what it entails. Field experiences in using new curriculum tools, such as It's All One, offer one lens onto these questions. To gain a sense of practitioners' experience with this tool, a two-part exercise was conducted. …
Very young adolescents (VYAs)—those between the ages of 10 and 14—represent about half of the 1.2 billion adolescents ages 10–19 in the world. A technical working group that the World Health Organization (WHO) convened in 2010 observed that, although adolescents ages 15–19 have been the main population segment addressed by adolescent health and development programs, the “special needs and concerns of young adolescents ages 10–14—some of whom are already sexually active—have been relatively neglected.” This neglect is, to some extent, a result of a lack of global HIV-related data for VYAs. …
Objective: The objective of this paper was to produce a global inventory of school health services and describe characteristics such as target group, providers, staffing level, services, settings, and organizational challenges. Methods: The literature in PubMed and other sources were reviewed using an explicit methodology. Results: School health services exist in at least 102 countries. Usually services are provided within school premises (97 countries), by dedicated school health personnel (59 countries). …
Gaining the knowledge and skills necessary to make healthy choices about sexual behavior as adolescent learners transition to young adulthood is key to controlling the potentially devastating effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. …
Background: Many adolescent girls in low-income and middle-income countries lack appropriate facilities and support in school to manage menstruation. Little research has been conducted on how menstruation affects school absence. This study examines the association of menstrual hygiene management knowledge, facilities and practice with absence from school during menstruation among Bangladeshi schoolgirls. Methods: We conducted a nationally representative, cross-sectional study in Bangladeshi schools from March to June 2013 among girls 11 to 17 years old who reached menarche. …
As everywhere in the world, adolescence is quite a challenging phase in the lives of young people in Pakistan. Girls and boys need support to not only understand all the emotional, social and physical changes they experience but also to help them transition into adulthood – safely and happily. Due to very strict and deeply felt societal and religious norms they are currently not getting this support, at home or at school. Sexuality is a taboo subject in most parts of Pakistani society. Even talking about bodily changes is con¬sidered ‘not done’. …
Background: Accessible sexual, reproductive, and mental healthcare services are crucial for adolescent health and wellbeing. It has been reported that school-based healthcare (SBHC) has the potential to improve the availability of services particularly for young people who are normally underserved. Locating health services in schools has the potential to reduce transport costs, increase accessibility and provide links between schools and communities. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was undertaken. …
The objective of the “BALIKA: Bangladeshi Association for Life Skills, Income, and Knowledge for Adolescents” project is to generate programmatic evidence to delay marriage in Bangladesh. This report documents baseline data from a survey conducted in 96 villages in the districts of Khulna, Narail, and Satkhira on a range of related indicators on education, livelihoods, sexual and reproductive health, and social life. …
Purpose of review: To review current evidence on the links between early marriage and health-related outcomes for young women and their children. Recent findings: Every third young woman in the developing countries excluding China continues to marry as a child, that is before age 18. Recent studies reiterate the adverse health consequences of early marriage among young women and their children even after a host of confounding factors are controlled. …
