Adolescent and Young Adult Health
The Adolescent and Young Adult Health Unit (AYH) leads and coordinates WHO-wide efforts to improve the health and well-being of adolescents and young adults.
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Norms and standards

 

Comprehensive care

This guidance is primarily aimed at policy makers and managers responsible for designing and managing health and wellbeing services for children and adolescents, and health and non-health care providers.

 

Ear and hearing care

The recommendations in this document are based on the best available knowledge and evidence on principles of hearing loss prevention and criteria for hearing damage caused by sound. They also address the need for, and methods of, communication to facilitate behaviour change in users of video gameplay devices, video gameplay, software titles, and those who participate in esports activities.

WHO estimates that over one billion young people globally are at risk of hearing loss due to sound exposure in recreational settings. The risk of permanent hearing injury due to unsafe listening is both avoidable, and costly.

In the face of this growing threat, governments, public-health agencies, those involved in the creation, distribution and amplification of music, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders, all have a duty of care in understanding the sound levels to which audiences and consumers are being exposed, and creating environments that facilitate safe listening behaviours.

To address this, WHO, as part of their Make Listening Safe initiative, developed the Global standard for safe listening venues and events which provides a common understanding of safe listening in entertainment venues and events. The Standard comprises six “features” which, when implemented, allow audience members around the world to enjoy amplified music with protection of their hearing, while also preserving the integrity of the artistic experience.

HIV

Since 2007 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) have recommended voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) as an important strategy for the prevention of heterosexually acquired HIV in men in settings where the prevalence of heterosexually transmitted HIV is high. Over 25 million men and adolescent boys in East and Southern Africa have been reached with VMMC services.

These new guidelines update earlier WHO recommendations to maximize the HIV prevention impact of safe VMMC services and aim to guide the transition to the sustained provision of interventions with a focus on the health and well-being of both adolescent boys and men.

Related

Policy brief 

 

Mental health

The quality standards for child and youth mental health services were developed in response to requests from the WHO pan-European Mental Health Coalition and WHO Member States for a standardised approach to quality assessment, measurement and improvement for child and youth community/outpatient mental health care across the WHO European Region. The standards outline an aspirational but achievable definition of high-quality care and provide a basis to assess and identify areas for improvement for the quality of specialised child and youth mental health services. The journey to implement the quality standards across the WHO European Region will require joint learning, commitment and action between all key stakeholders.

This document is designed to inform and inspire policy makers and others responsible for mental health services for children and young people, through introducing key issues to consider, important domains for standards of mental health care and by sharing a broad range of good practice approaches to developing or re-orienting services at community level.

Nutrition

This framework integrates health and social systems responses for the prevention and management of obesity that can be adapted according to country, context, circumstance, and need. The framework proposes a range of services organized by level of care (self-management, community care, primary care, secondary care, tertiary care and multisectoral interventions) to prevent and manage obesity throughout the life course, and includes a focus on adolescents 10-19 years old. 

Quality of care

WHO/UNAIDS Global Standards for quality health care services for adolescents aim to assist policy-makers and health service planners in improving the quality of health-care services so that adolescents find it easier to obtain the health services that they need to promote, protect and improve their health and well-being. 

 

School health

This European framework for quality standards in school health services and competences for school health professionals, developed by the WHO Regional Office for Europe, aims to support the Member States to develop and sustain school health services as part of their national health systems. The framework, which is focused primarily at national- and regional-level policy-makers responsible for school health service standards and service quality, can be adapted by individual countries to enable them to develop services that reflect health priorities and health systems. Instead of recommending a specific way of organizing school health services, mandating a single process for dividing work among health professionals or creating a definitive set of quantitative standards, the framework allows individual countries to tailor it to their own specific needs.

 

This publication is based on an extensive review of health-promoting school policies, strategies and guidelines from 91 countries in various regions and on expert and public consultations with education and health sector policy-makers, practitioners and researchers around the world.

 

Sexual and reproductive health

This guidance is intended to assist anyone designing and/or implementing CSE in out-of-school settings, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This includes international and national civil-society organizations, community-based organizations, government departments, UN agencies, health authorities, non-formal education authorities and youth development authorities. It is also intended for anyone else involved in the design, delivery and evaluation of sexuality education programmes out of school, especially those working with the specific groups of young people

 

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) plays a central role in the preparation of young people for a safe, productive, fulfilling life in a world where HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended pregnancies, gender-based violence (GBV) and gender inequality still pose serious risks to their well-being. However, despite clear and compelling evidence for the benefits of high-quality, curriculum-based CSE, few children and young people receive preparation for their lives that empowers them to take control and make informed decisions about their sexuality and relationships freely and responsibly.

Countries are increasingly acknowledging the importance of equipping young people with the knowledge and skills to make responsible choices in their lives, particularly in a context where they have greater exposure to sexually explicit material through the Internet and other media. 

 

Many ASRH projects encounter and address policy and programmatic challenges, and in doing so, learn valuable lessons. Since careful documentation and rigorous evaluation are the exception rather than the norm, though, the lessons from these efforts are not extracted and placed in the public arena. Post-project evaluations thus have a role to complement prospective studies for new or follow-on projects. However, there is a lack of guidance and literature on post-project evaluations, and that technical guidance from funding agencies for conducting post-project evaluation is rare.

To begin to bridge this gap more formally, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed this practical guide for conducting post-project evaluations of ASRH projects.

 

Adolescence – defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the second decade of life – is a time when enormous physical, psychological and social changes occur. This is a time when individuals initiate and experiment with “adult behaviours”, such as sexual activity and substance use (1). These behaviours can result in negative health outcomes, such as unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and negative social outcomes, such as school dropout and social exclusion (2,3).

Research relating to this population is crucial. However, the participation of adolescents in health research poses legal and ethical challenges, particularly when the research focuses on sexual and reproductive health. This document highlights some of these challenges and outlines how they may be addressed. It is intended to provide practical guidance to people involved in sexual and reproductive health research with adolescents.

Substance use prevention

The International Standards for the Treatment of Drug Use Disorders was prepared by World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to support Member States in developing and expanding effective, evidence-based and ethical treatment for drug use disorders, especially in less-resourced settings. They provide key principles for organizing treatment services for drug use disorders and describe the main components of treatment systems, including treatment settings, modalities and interventions. Additionally, they include considerations for populations with special treatment and care needs.

This work builds on, recognizes and is complementary to the work of many other organizations such as the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which have developed other standards and guidelines on various aspects of drug use prevention.