Providing comprehensive health services for young key populations: needs, barriers and gaps
This review undertook a search to identify age-specific data on the health needs and barriers to care for young key populations
Abstract
More than any other life stage, adolescent health is strongly determined by social context. Both structural determinants of health (such as national wealth, income inequality, access to education and health services, employment opportunities and gender inequality) and more proximate determinants of health (such as connectedness of adolescents to family and school) affect health-related behaviour and outcomes during adolescence.
Key populations contribute disproportionately to HIV transmission dynamics within countries, with recent estimates suggesting that 50% of new HIV infections occur among these populations. In young key populations (YKP), the effects of stigma, discrimination and violence are exacerbated by policy and legal barriers related to the age of consent for sex and for access to selected medical interventions, further limiting access to a range of health services. As a consequence, YKP are frequently a hidden population. Reliable and representative epidemiological data on their health are scarce.
Guided by a conceptual framework of adolescent health, this review undertook a targeted, web-based search to identify age-specific data on the health needs and barriers to care for YKP.
This research is supported by the Department for International Development’s STRIVE Programme which is led by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
Citation
Delany-Moretlwe, S.; Cowan, F.M.; Busza, J.; Bolton-Moore, C.; Kelley, K.; Fairlie, L. Providing comprehensive health services for young key populations: needs, barriers and gaps. Journal of the International AIDS Society (2015) 18 (2(Suppl 1)) [DOI: 10.7448/IAS.18.2.19833]
Links
Providing comprehensive health services for young key populations: needs, barriers and gaps