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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Policy directions and advocacy

Adolescent health

This toolkit presents a compendium of policy options for walking and cycling, highlighting the multiple benefits that promoting and enabling safe walking and cycling for recreation and transport can bring to individuals, communities, the environment, and the economy. It outlines seven strategic policy options for countries to consider implementing that collectively aim to enable safer walking and cycling for people of all ages and abilities, and to support maintaining and/or increasing levels of walking and cycling either for transport or active recreation in countries worldwide. Case studies are included to showcase real-world examples of how these policy options are being successfully put into practice.

This is the second in the series of biennial reports that comes on the wake of the Global Forum for Adolescents 2023 and is powered by its 1.8 Billion Young People for Change campaign. The report describes WHO’s efforts to elevate adolescent health and well-being through collaboration and by coordinating new initiatives, addressing emerging needs and establishing ambitious objectives with its development partners and adolescents.

Cancer

This global strategy to eliminate cervical cancer proposes:

  • a vision of a world where cervical cancer is eliminated as a public health problem;
  • a threshold of 4 per 100 000 women-years for elimination as a public health problem; 
  • the following 90-70-90 targets that must be met by 2030 for countries to be on the path towards cervical cancer elimination:
  • 90% of girls fully vaccinated with HPV vaccine by age 15 years.
  • 70% of women are screened with a high-performance test by 35 years of age and again by 45 years of age
  • 90% of women identified with cervical disease receive treatment (90% of women with precancer treated, and 90% of women with invasive cancer managed).
  • a mathematical model that illustrates the following interim benefits of achieving the 90-70-90 targets by 2030 in low- and lower-middle-income countries:
  • median cervical cancer incidence rate will fall by 42% by 2045, and by 97% by 2120, averting more than 74 million new cases of cervical cancer;
  • median cumulative number of cervical cancer deaths averted will be 300 000 by 2030, over 14 million by 2070, and over 62 million by 2120.

The Initiative brings together stakeholders from around the world and across sectors with the joint goal of increasing the survival rate at least by 60% by 2030 while reducing suffering and improving quality of life for children with cancer globally.

This Overview document reminds us: if we act now, “All hands in”, we can save one million lives over the next decade.

WHO position paper on human papillomavirus

Weekly Epidemiological Record, 2017, vol. 92, 19 [full issue]
12 May 2017 |
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The position papers are intended for use mainly by national public health officials and managers of immunization programmes. They may also be of interest to international funding agencies, vaccine advisory groups, vaccine manufacturers, the medical community, scientific media and the general public.

 

Environmental health

Prescriptions and Actionables for a Healthy and Green Recovery.

The following WHO prescriptions and accompanied actionables are practical steps for implementing the WHO Manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19. They aim at creating a healthier, fairer and greener world while investing to maintain and resuscitate the economy hit by the effects of COVID-19.

Six WHO prescriptions, and a comprehensive set of key actionables, for achieving healthier environments is provided accordingly. Their prioritization will depend upon the local context and situation. New investments and reconsideration of priorities in the context of recovery from COVID-19 present unique opportunities for shaping healthier environments and scaling up actions accordingly.

Mercury-containing skin lightening products are hazardous to health and as a result have been banned in many countries. Even in some countries where such products have been banned, they are still advertised and available to consumers via the Internet and other means.

To stop the manufacture, import and export of skin lightening products in line with the Minamata Convention, regulatory actions by governments are needed – including training of customs agents – as well as major media and advocacy campaigns.

These key findings, which are described below, lead to an urgent, inescapable conclusion: the global community must redouble its efforts to expand and accelerate access to clean energy. In so doing, we have an unprecedented opportunity to eliminate an enormous health burden that currently weighs down nearly half the world, especially its women and children, and thereby free up a vast amount of human potential.

HIV

This technical brief is one in a series addressing four young key populations. It is intended for policy-makers, donors, service-planners, service-providers and community-led organizations. This brief aims to catalyse and inform discussions about how best to provide services, programmes and support for young transgender people.

HPV Vaccine Introduction Clearing House

The HPV Vaccine Introduction Clearing House is a unique space to find WHO publications, tools and other important resources on the human papillomavirus vaccine.

The purpose is to help guide HPV vaccine policy, programme and communications managers in the development of successful strategies for the introduction and sustained delivery of HPV vaccination at a national level.

Immunization

GET INFORMED. GET SCREENED. GET VACCINATED.

 

 Advocacy toolkit to support cervical cancer elimination:  https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/cervical-cancer-elimination-day-of-action-2023--advocacy-toolkit

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer by 2030. This toolkit provides resources to support HPV and other advocacy efforts in championing the Global Strategy and the elimination of cervical cancer in each community.

Nutrition

This joint UNICEF and WHO publication aims to guide governments and partners through the steps to introduce policies to protect children and adolescents from the harmful impact of food marketing. Structured into three parts, the first part describes the impact of food marketing on children and adolescents and identifies the main developments and challenges in the marketing landscape observed in the past decade. Part 2 outlines why a child rights-based approach can and should be used by governments to restrict food marketing. Part 3 identifies how governments can take action to restrict food marketing and is organized by the main stages in a policy cycle: policy preparation, policy development, implementation (including enforcement and monitoring for compliance), and monitoring and evaluation for policy impact.

This document is an output of a WHO cross-programme initiative aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and management of anaemia and thereby accelerate reduction in its prevalence. It covers anaemia due to micronutrient deficiencies, inflammation, infection, obstetric and gynaecological disorders, and inherited blood disorders, acknowledging the important role of social determinants of health and the challenges in accurately measuring haemoglobin concentrations and indicators of the underlying causes of anaemia. It consolidates the evidence and describes how multiple sectors can work together to identify and address key barriers and seize opportunities to reduce the burden of anaemia. While the main focus is on menstruating women and adolescents, pregnant and postpartum women, and children, in low- and middle-income countries, several interventions also benefit populations across the life course and around the world.

This policy brief summarizes the rationale and evidence around nudges for promoting healthy eating in school settings. It aims to increase awareness of the opportunities for nudges in a school food setting, and proposes action points for decision-makers to implement nudges for healthier eating in schools. Evidence shows that the implementation of nudge-based interventions can contribute to improving the school food environment and facilitating the selection and consumption of food and beverages that contribute to a healthy diet in children. With or without intervention, there is a prevailing choice architecture already in place. On this basis and given the relatively low cost of implementation, nudges within school food settings to support healthy eating should be instigated to complement other efforts such as school food and nutrition policies and food procurement for healthy diets.

It aims to promote expanded access to obesity prevention and management services for all age groups across the life course. It is addressed to policy makers and guides the integration and organization of obesity prevention and management services through the health system and community as critical components of universal health coverage.

Quality of care

This policy brief informs national public health programme managers, facility managers, health-care providers, and national bodies in charge of quality improvement as well as individuals and organizations supporting their work, such as development agencies, NGOs and the commercial sector, about the rationale for improving the quality of health services for adolescents, the Global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents (WHO/UNAIDS, 2015) and their implementation.
The WHO policy brief “Building an adolescent competent workforce” aims to support advocacy to invest in competency-based educational programmes in adolescent health and development in both pre-service and in-service education. It clarifies the rationale for health-care providers to have special training in adolescent health, explains what are the core competencies required, and features WHO tools to support training in adolescent health. The policy brief is based on the Core competencies in adolescent health and development for primary care providers.

School health

This brief highlights how alcogenic environments influence young people’s normalization of alcohol and their patterns of consumption. It explores the evidence of the effectiveness and challenges of current interventions to address the acceptability, availability and affordability of alcohol.

Based primarily on national case summaries from around the world contained in the COVID-19 Open-Access Case Law Database, this publication describes legal issues that may arise in designing and implementing public health interventions related to education and schools. It is designed to support robust and proportionate public health practice that respects human rights.
Drinking safe water is the best way for children to stay healthy and quench thirst. Water is the best choice for children to restore the fluids their bodies have lost, for example, through sweating. If children lose too much water, they become ‘dehydrated’ and their bodies cannot function properly. Drinking safe water is the best way for children to stay hydrated.
The guide is intended to provide schools and their students with the necessary knowledge and tools to successfully adopt a nicotine-free and tobacco-free campus policy. This step-by-step guide suggests engaging activities, offers sample communications material and provides practical examples of schools worldwide that have implemented nicotine-free and tobacco-free campus policies.
This topic brief highlights how promoting mental health and well-being supports the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
This topic brief highlights how addressing substance use supports the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
This topic brief highlights how improved water, sanitation and hygiene support the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
This topic brief highlights how physical activity supports the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
This topic brief highlights how nutrition and healthy diets support the achievement of education and learning objectives, and explains how intervention benefits can be amplified with a whole-school and systems approach. The recommended actions are informed by the Global Standards for health-promoting schools. This evidence-informed resource is intended for national education, health and associated sectors to support the strengthening of national school health programmes.
This ground-breaking report brings together, for the first time, multiple data sources to provide a global overview of school health and nutrition policies and programmes, showing that these are a practical and affordable way to support learners’ well-being and development.

Substance use prevention

This brief highlights how alcogenic environments influence young people’s normalization of alcohol and their patterns of consumption. It explores the evidence of the effectiveness and challenges of current interventions to address the acceptability, availability and affordability of alcohol.

The environment in which young people live, learn and play significantly affects their decisions about whether to consume alcohol. Environmental factors are the main risk factors driving alcohol consumption and related harm among young people. Environments that normalize alcohol consumption – termed alcogenic environments – include contexts with unregulated advertising and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher alcohol outlet density, products designed to facilitate affordability and low prices of alcoholic beverages.

A recent body of research evidence has emerged related to the measurement, functional significance and consequences of living in alcogenic environments. This includes findings on the complex and bidirectional interactions among alcohol acceptability, availability and affordability and how they create and perpetuate alcogenic environments. Comprehensive and enforced alcohol control policies are effective at delaying the age of onset and lowering alcohol prevalence and frequency among young people. Evidence consistently confirms the effectiveness of designing and implementing alcohol control policies that regulate upstream the drivers of alcogenic environment, including alcohol availability, acceptability and affordability. These policies need to be multipronged and address the complex interactions between these drivers and the local alcohol culture.

This booklet is part of a series on good policy and practice in health education presented by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). For this publication, UNESCO is joined by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), which both share an interest in education sector responses to substance use prevention, and bring their particular mandates and expertise to the issue. UNODC’s International Standards on Drug Use Prevention (2013) and the WHO’s Health for the World’s Adolescents (2014) set a context for this volume.

TB in children and adolescents

The third edition is aligned with the 2022 WHO consolidated guidelines and operational handbook on the management of TB in children and adolescents. Its development has benefitted from significant technical inputs by the core team of the Child and Adolescent TB Working Group throughout the process, and from additional inputs from the working group members and country representatives during a stakeholder consultation. WHO will continue to collaborate with TB survivors, community, civil society, technical and financial partners to advocate and facilitate implementation of the key actions as included in the 2023 Roadmap.

Violence prevention

Based on a global systematic review of evidence, Preventing violence against children: a social determinants framework for INSPIRE implementation presents a set of policies and laws that can support roll out of the interventions included within the INSPIRE framework. The policies and laws are selected based on evidence that they either directly prevent violence against children, or positively influence intermediary determinants that affect children’s risk of violence, including material circumstances, psychosocial, behavioural and biological factors, and the health system itself. For each policy and law, the report presents a rationale for inclusion, and a summary of the evidence available for each approach, focusing where possible on those with a greater level of evidence.

Youth participation

This initiative invites governments, civil society, private sectors, and individuals to join efforts in creating inclusive, supportive environments where young people can lead and thrive.