Helpdesk Report: Adolescent sexual and reproductive health

This report identified a number of reviews on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and gives main findings

From:
Department for International Development
Published
1 January 2016
Document Type:
Literature Review
Theme:
Health
Authors:
Bolton, L.

Abstract

This report examines the question: What is the evidence for the greater impact of having targeted programmes on adolescence in achieving broader sexual and reproductive health (SRH) goals?

This helpdesk identified a number of reviews on adolescent SRH. Key findings include:

  • Facilitating school attendance reduces childbearing and schools are an effective platform for reproductive health education.
  • To improve access and use one review recommends: enacting and implementing laws and policies requiring education and reproductive health services, building community support for contraception provision; providing sexuality education within and outside of school settings; and making health services adolescent-friendly.
  • Adolescent childbearing and early marriage are detrimental to girls’ health, school completion, and long-term earning potential, and their babies’ health and development, contributing to poverty at the household and national level.
  • Involving adolescents in the planning process improved effectiveness, as did programmes sustained over long periods.
  • Social marketing and behaviour change communication interventions have been effective in increasing contraceptive uptake, but had low impact on effective use and continuation.
  • Mobile phones and social media are promising means of increasing contraceptive use among adolescents.
  • A rights-based approach to adolescent fertility is recommended and shifting focus from the proximate to distal causes of pregnancy, including human rights abuses, gender inequality, child marriage, and socioeconomic marginalisation.
  • In providing adolescent friendly services recommended approaches use a combination of health-worker training, adolescent-friendly facility improvements and broad information dissemination via the community, schools, and mass media.
  • Cash transfers are effective in motivating change in a variety of settings.

Citation

Bolton, L. Helpdesk Report: Adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Health and Education Advice and Resource Team (HEART), Oxford, UK (2016) 21 pp.

Helpdesk Report: Adolescent sexual and reproductive health

Updates to this page

Published 1 January 2016
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