While adolescence is often referred to as one of the healthiest decades of life, the reality is that adolescents face many health challenges, including premature death, violence, and undesired sexual and reproductive health outcomes such as unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion, HIV and STI.
Adolescents experience many barriers to health care, including financial, legal, and societal barriers, and when they do access health services, they are often confronted with health care systems and providers insufficiently prepared to provide competent, respectful and high quality health services for these adolescents.
In order to support transformation of health systems to better respond to the health and development needs of adolescents, the World Health Organization (WHO) undertook an extensive process that involved many stakeholders, to develop Global Standards for quality health care services for adolescents. One of these standards (#4) proposes that health care providers need to acquire the technical competence required to provide effective health services to adolescents.
PAHO/WHO is organizing a webinar to inform stakeholders regarding this recent global guidance for improvement of adolescent health services, and discuss their implications for the region.
Presentations:
- Presentation: A standards-driven approach to improve the quality of health care services for adolescents
- Presentation: Core competencies in adolescent health and development for primary health care providers
