Organización Panamericana de la Salud
Promoviendo la salud en las Américas
Safe Hospitals
Child and Adolescent Health Homepage - Publications and Other Resources - Strategic Alliances and Partnerships
»» Newsletters : Youth AIDS Action - Breaking the Silence
»» About the Adolescent Health and Development Team

Home About us Aliances Library Distance courses Adolescents in the Region

Health care


Adolescent care should be approached from the standpoint of prevention, shifting the classical consultation with a health care provider from a curative model of care to one that includes measures for the early detection of risks and/or vulnerability and facilitates adolescents' participation in their own health care.(IMAN/PAHO, 2007)

Health care should regard adolescents as integral beings, promoting their development in all areas; it should foster knowledge and appreciation of their bodies and sexuality and the construction of their autonomy and self-esteem, so that they learn to communicate and freely make responsible and informed decisions that will enable them to develop a healthy life plan and assume the different roles that they will have to play in adult life as citizens, employees, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, breadwinners or homemakers.

Links

The traditional approaches to youth health services demonstrate that action and political support (laws and policies) are not the only things that are needed. In addition, the needs, hopes, and experiences of adolescents, their families, and their communities must be understood. Many Latin American and Caribbean countries have set up comprehensive adolescent health services in different environments, including hospitals, community health centers, schools, community centers, NGOs, and other organizations.

Generally speaking, youth participation and care in adolescent health services are found in all the countries. However, there is a need to improve the services' adaptation to adolescents' needs and expectations and the evaluation of the existing services, and to pay more attention to the management and monitoring of those services.

The Programming Committee on Adolescent Health made up of the international technical cooperation agencies PAHO/WHO, UNICEF, and UNFPA, recommends the creation of quality health services for young people, with emphasis on sexual and reproductive health care. In order to address these needs, the services should take into account the differences among and within the countries of the Region (age, gender, customs, religion, race, development level), as well as common problems. An important aspect will be the obligation to meet the needs of the different stages of development in the life cycle of adolescents of both sexes

The services must be organized to meet the health needs and demands of adolescents and young adults, as well as their individual and collective expectations in this regard. The gap between the supply and demand for adolescent and young adult services should be closed.

Experience has shown that in order to provide good quality care to adolescents, a designated space is needed with trained staff, including youth peer educators. It can be a specific locale or center that tends to their different needs and offers workshops and educational activities. It can also be set up in a health service for adults, with one or two weekdays devoted exclusively to adolescents and young adults.

The report IMAN Servicios: Normas de atención de salud sexual y reproductiva de adolescentes (FCH/CA, PAHO/OMS,2006) describes the basic elements and characteristics of appropriate adolescent health care systems, which are listed below:


Quality health services: characteristics

  • Geographically accessible.At the first level of care or in unconventional places such as clubs, schools, and youth or religious organizations, near the places frequented by adolescents


  • Accessible hours.Flexible, extended hours that also provide service outside the school- or workday.

  • Accessible prices. Preferably, free services.

  • Culturally accessible to adolescents from diverse backgrounds, with equitable services Adapted to age, development, preferences, and cultural context, with the participation of adolescents of both sexes. Adapted, moreover, to the local culture and ethnic groups in terms of language and preferences, without discrimination
    • .

  • Confidential
    • . Clear confidentiality rules visibly posted in services for adolescents and their fathers/mothers. The services should offer contraception in these confidential locations to keep adolescents from having to resort to family planning services for adults, where they can be identified.

  • Comprehensive.
    • . Primary prevention and secondary and/or tertiary care for biopsychosocial problems, linked with a network of community services and institutions

  • The gender approach .
    • Services for men and women that provide orientation and workshops that will make it possible to study and reduce gender inequity and empower and develop the decision-making capacity adolescents of box sexes about health and sexuality; and that also facilitate the construction of a life plan with better health. Health teams should engage in ongoing reflection about the gender stereotypes that they harbor that they can foster inequity between men and women through their practices.

  • Sustainable interventions.
    • . Interventions should be linked with prevention projects already known to the community, with proposals suggested by the community itself and with the support of resources from the State budget.

  • Ongoing training
    • . Training should be based on specific cases and interdisciplinary, with proposals to improve the quality of care, which includes analysis of the socioemotional perspective of both adolescents and health workers.

  • Periodically assessable .
    • With the participation of adolescents, their fathers/mothers and other people who work in the network of community institutions and organizations, and establishing process and results indicators.

    Read more in IMAN Servicios: Normas de atención sexual y reproductiva para adolescentes (2006. Spanish)