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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WHO guidelines

Cancer

The World Health Organization (WHO) has developed Guidelines for the pharmacologic and radiotherapeutic management of cancer pain in adults and adolescents to provide evidence-based guidance to initiating and managing cancer pain. The aims of these guidelines are to provide guidance to health-care providers (i.e. the end-users of these guidelines: physicians, nurses, pharmacists and caregivers) on the adequate relief of pain associated with cancer.

 

Chronic pain in children

The purpose of this guideline is to assist WHO Member States and their partners in developing and implementing national and local policies, regulations, pain management protocols and best practices. It will help countries balance concerns about ensuring access to appropriate therapies for pain relief with the harms arising from misuse of medications and other potential adverse effects of interventions for pain management. 

 

Communicable diseases

The WHO Guidelines for malaria supersedes 2 previous WHO publications: the Guidelines for the treatment of malaria, third edition and the Guidelines for malaria vector control. The consolidated WHO Guidelines for malaria bring together all recommendations for malaria, including prevention using vector control, preventive chemotherapy and the vaccine; diagnosis, treatment and elimination strategies. Recommendations for children and adults are included.

The WHO guideline on the prevention and diagnosis of rheumatic fever (RF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) provides evidence-informed recommendations for the prevention and management of RF and RHD. It encompasses three areas; 1) primary prevention of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, specifically the identification and treatment of suspected group A (beta-haemolytic) Streptococcus (GAS) pharyngitis and skin infections; 2) secondary prevention of recurrent rheumatic fever and of rheumatic heart disease, specifically use of long-term antibiotic prophylaxis, interventions to increase adherence to antibiotic prophylaxis, and screening for early rheumatic heart disease; and 3) management of rheumatic fever, specifically the treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs.

The recommendations are intended for wide audience involved in the prevention and management of RF and RHD.  

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on preventive chemotherapy (deworming), as a public health intervention in areas endemic for soil-transmitted helminths, to decrease the worm burden of soil-transmitted helminth infections in children, adolescent girls, women of reproductive age and pregnant women, including those coinfected with HIV.

 

Comprehensive care

This Pocket Book is for use by doctors, nurses and other health workers who are responsible for the care of children and adolescents at the primary health care level. It summarizes guidance on how to manage – and when to refer – children and adolescents presenting with common complaints and conditions. It includes information to enable primary health care providers to coordinate the continued care of children and adolescents with long-term conditions and diseases managed by specialists. Preventive and promotive measures from the newborn period to adolescence include advice on the timing and content of well-child visits, the promotion of early childhood development and health messages for adolescents.

 

Environmental health

The purpose of the WHO Guideline for clinical management of exposure to lead is to assist physicians in making decisions about the diagnosis and treatment of lead exposure for individual patients and in mass poisoning incidents.

The guideline presents evidence-informed recommendations on:

  1. the interpretation of blood lead concentrations;
  2. use of gastrointestinal decontamination;
  3. use of a chelating agent; and
  4. use of nutritional supplements. 

HIV

This guideline seeks to provide support to Member States, programme managers, health workers and other stakeholders seeking to achieve national and international goals to end the HIV epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 and advance the importance of integrated services delivery.

This guidelines includes recommendations for adolescents.

These guidelines provide new and updated recommendations on the use of point-of-care testing in children under 18 months of age and point-of-care tests to monitor treatment in people living with HIV; the treatment monitoring algorithm; and timing of antiretroviral therapy (ART) among people living with HIV who are being treated for tuberculosis.

WHO is currently in the process of collating all HIV normative guidance developed since 2016 in order to publish the third edition of the consolidated HIV guidelines in July 2021. This updated version will include the new clinical guidance presented here.

These consolidated guidelines on HIV testing services (HTS) bring together existing and new guidance on HTS across different settings and populations.

These guidelines provide specific recommendations and expert suggestions — for national policy-makers and programme managers and their partners and stakeholders— on prioritizing, planning and providing HIV testing, counselling, treatment and care services for adolescents.

Mental health

The Guidelines on promotive and preventive mental health interventions for adolescents - Helping Adolescents thrive (HAT), provide evidence-informed recommendations on psychosocial interventions to promote mental health, prevent mental disorders, and reduce self-harm and other risk behaviours among adolescents. 

The HAT Guidelines  aims to inform policy development, service planning and the strengthening of health and education systems, and facilitate mainstreaming of adolescent mental health promotion and prevention strategies across sectors and delivery platforms. 

This is the second version (2016) of the mhGAP Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) for mental, neurological and substance use (MNS) disorders in non-specialist health settings. It is for use by doctors, nurses, other health workers as well as health planners and managers. The Intervention Guide presents the integrated management of priority MNS conditions using algorithms for clinical decision making. This update of the 2010 edition is based on new evidence as well as extensive feedback and recommendations from experts in all WHO regions who have used mhGAP-IG Version 1.0.

Physical activity

The WHO Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour provide evidence-based public health recommendations for children, adolescents, adults and older adults on the amount of physical activity (frequency, intensity and duration) required to offer significant health benefits and mitigate health risks. For the first time, recommendations are provided on the associations between sedentary behaviour and health outcomes, as well as for subpopulations, such as pregnant and postpartum women, and people living with chronic conditions or disability. 

WHO Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour: web annex evidence profiles

Nutrition

This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the intake of saturated fatty acids and trans-fatty acids to reduce the risk of diet-related noncommunicable diseases in adults and children, particularly cardiovascular diseases.

 

This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the percentage of total fat in the diet to reduce the risk of unhealthy weight gain.

 

This guideline provides updated, evidence-informed guidance on the intake of carbohydrates to reduce the risk of diet-noncommunicable diseases in adults and children, with a particular focus on carbohydrate “quality”. Carbohydrate quality refers to the nature and composition of carbohydrates in a food or in the diet, including the proportion of sugars, how quickly polysaccharides are metabolized and release glucose into the body (i.e. digestibility), and the amount of dietary fibre. The quality of carbohydrates in the diet can broadly impact health.

 

This WHO guideline provides Member States with recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to protect children and adolescents from the harmful impact of food marketing, based on evidence specific to children and to the context of food marketing.

 

This publication is a derivative product summarizing the global, evidence-informed recommendations and principles of the World Health Organization that address malnutrition in all its forms in adolescents with the aim of ensuring healthy lives and well-being among this group.

The purpose of this publication is to facilitate the implementation of existing WHO guidelines on nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive actions required for improving health and well-being of adolescents.

This guideline aims to help Member States and their partners in their efforts to make informed decisions on the appropriate nutrition actions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (1), the global targets set in the Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal, infant and young child nutrition (2) and the Global strategy for women’s, children’s and adolescent girls’ health (2016–2030) (3).

 

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on daily iron supplementation in infants and children, as a public-health intervention for the prevention of anaemia and iron deficiency. It includes recommendations for iron supplementation in countries where malaria is prevalent.

 

School health

This WHO guideline on SHS aims to provide national governments and other stakeholders with detailed guidance on the effectiveness, acceptability and content of comprehensive SHS involving a health worker.

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on the intermittent use of iron and folic acid supplements as a public health measure for the purpose of reducing anaemia and improving iron status among menstruating women. The guideline will help Members States and their partners in their efforts to make informed decisions on the appropriate nutrition actions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, in particular, promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women (MDG 3) and improvement in maternal health (MDG 5).

Sexual and reproductive health

In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the WHO guidelines on the management of health complications from female genital mutilation. That publication’s main purpose was to provide evidence-informed recommendations on managing health complications associated with FGM. The current revised guideline has an expanded scope, providing up-to-date recommendations on FGM prevention as well as clinical management of complications.

The process of updating and revising this guideline resulted in eight recommendations relating to training and capacity-building of health workers on FGM prevention and care, including access to capacity-building resources; educational interventions targeting women and girls living with or at risk of FGM as well as men and boys in FGM-affected communities; deinfibulation for women with Type III FGM, including the timing of deinfibulation; mental health interventions for women and girls living with FGM and having symptoms of anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and surgical and non-surgical sexual health interventions.

In addition, three best practice statements are presented on the development and enforcement of laws and policies against FGM, the need for professional codes of conduct for health workers and the importance of counselling and informed consent prior to deinfibulation. Considerations on implementing the recommendations are also discussed. 

WHO guidelines on preventing early pregnancy and poor reproductive outcomes among adolescents in developing countries provides a robust evidence base to help develop or reshape national policies and strategies. The guidelines help to ensure that available resources are spent on optimal approaches to prevent early pregnancies among adolescents, and on reducing morbidity and mortality associated with pregnancy and childbirth.

This document provides an overview of sexual and reproductive health and rights issues that may be important for the human rights, health and well-being of adolescents (aged 10–19 years) and the relevant World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on how to address them in an easily accessible, user-friendly format.

The document serves as a gateway to the rich body of WHO guidelines, and as a handy resource to inform advocacy, policy and programme/project design and research. It aims to support the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health 2016–2030, and is aligned with the WHO Global Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!) as well as the WHO Operational Framework on Sexual Health and Its Linkages to Reproductive Health.

TB in children and adolescents

The 2024 recommendations for the programmatic management of TPT are released as part of Module 1 of the WHO consolidated TB guidelines series. The guidelines are complemented by an operational handbook, that provides practical advice on how to implement the recommendations at the scale needed to achieve national and global impact. The guidelines and the handbook are the second edition of the documents and update the edition that was first published in 2020.

The guidelines includes recommendations for adolescents.

The WHO operational handbook on tuberculosis. Module 5: Management of tuberculosis in children and adolescents is the practical implementation guide to the 2022 WHO guidelines on the management of tuberculosis in children and adolescents. This handbook is part of a modular series of operational handbooks designed to facilitate the uptake and implementation of WHO recommendations as part of the programmatic management of TB in children (0-< 10 years) and adolescents (10-19 years included). It covers the full cascade of care, including TB screening, prevention, diagnostic approaches and treatment of TB, as well as special situations and models of care for TB service delivery.

The 18 recommendations on tuberculosis preventive treatment in the 2020 update cover critical steps in programmatic management that follow the cascade of preventive care. The main changes introduced include conditional recommendations for a 1-month daily rifapentine and isoniazid regimen and a 4-month daily rifampicin regimen as alternative treatment options in all TB burden settings. Advice on isoniazid preventive treatment in pregnancy and on the concomitant use of rifapentine and dolutegravir has been updated to reflect the findings from latest studies. The operational limitations that need to be overcome by countries to achieve global targets are highlighted and will be discussed in greater detail in the accompanying operational handbook that is being released concurrently. The guidelines are to be used primarily in national TB and HIV programmes, or their equivalents in ministries of health, and for other policy-makers working on TB and HIV and infectious diseases in public and private sectors and in the community.

 

Violence prevention

This handbook is intended primarily for front-line health care providers who are likely to see children (among other clients) in their day-to-day practice. These may include general practitioners, nurses, midwives, gynaecologists, paediatricians, mental health professionals, first responders and staff in emergency care.

Every year up to 1 billion children experience physical, sexual or psychological violence. These new WHO guidelines aim to help frontline healthcare providers to recognize children who have suffered from violence and neglect and provide evidence-based first line support.

WHO has published new clinical guidelines Responding to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused aimed at helping front-line health workers, primarily from low resource settings, in providing evidence-based, quality, trauma-informed care to survivors. The guidelines emphasize the importance of promoting safety, offering choices and respecting the wishes and autonomy of children and adolescents. They cover recommendations for post-rape care and mental health; and approaches to minimizing distress in the process of taking medical history, conducting examination and documenting findings.

 

Worldwide, an estimated 200 000 homicides occur each year among youth and young adults aged 10–29 years, making homicide the fourth leading cause of death in this age group. Eighty three percent of homicide victims in this age group are male, and nearly all of these deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. For each young person killed, many more sustain injuries requiring hospital treatment. Beyond deaths and injuries, youth violence can lead to mental health problems and increased health-risk behaviours, such as smoking, alcohol and drug use, and unsafe sex. Youth violence results in greatly increased health, welfare and criminal justice costs; reduces productivity; decreases the value of property in areas where it occurs; and generally undermines the fabric of society. Accordingly, effective youth violence prevention programmes can improve a broad range of health, education and social outcomes, leading to potentially substantial economic savings.