The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has given special priority to developing and implementing plans, programs, and services for adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean. PAHO's conceptual framework is aimed at fostering adolescent development within the context of the family and the socioeconomic, political, and cultural environment and promoting programs that support adolescent development as a strategy to prevent future health problems in this group. (OPS, 1998)
Strenghthening Families Program
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The most effective way of improving the health of adolescents is to adopt an integral prevention and promotion approach to their development.
Adolescent health and development has become a critical issue, especially if the aim is to address problems such as unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse, accidents, violence, nutritional disorders, etc. These health problems stem from the behaviors or lifestyles of young people themselves, have common risk factors, and have a cause-and-effect relationship
Within the Comprehensive Adolescent Health Program proposed by the Pan American Health Organization, a family focus is considered one of the major integrating approaches that should be adopted as strategy for tackling these problems, as the family is one of the microenvironments that promote health, development, and well-being.
From a psychosocial perspective, the family is viewed as:
One of the adolescent's microenvironments and therefore responsible for promoting a healthy lifestyle. This lifestyle should foster the well-being and development of all family members.
A complex and integrating context in itself, since it participates in the interactional dynamic of the biological, psychosocial, and ecological systems, in which the basic processes in adolescent development are mobilized.
A psychosocial unit subject to the influence of sociocultural protection and risk factors, whose interaction makes it vulnerable to crises or dysfunctional patterns.
One of the protective factors when it works properly; it is therefore one of the primordial and primary foci in prevention
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