Responding to the needs of adolescents

Abstract

How-ever, real progress in scaling up such approaches has been modest and slow to materialize. The Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development at the World Health Organization is sup-porting national sexual and reproduc-tive health and HIV programmes to work together to better respond to the needs of adolescents, focusing on the following four key areas: (i) gathering, analysing and using strategic informa-tion from an adolescent perspective; (ii) developing supportive policies and strategies based on strategic informa-tion and sound evidence; (iii) scaling up the provision of health services and commodities; and (iv) engaging and strengthening other sectors.A lack of accurate, up-to-date, age-disaggregated data on sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS hinders well-informed policy and strat-egy development. We are supporting countries to analyse existing data from an adolescent perspective to advocate for coordinated attention to sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS in this age group.