- The most powerful gains for adolescent well-being result from multisectoral action. Countries should invest in intersectoral programmes for adolescent health and well-being to leverage the multiplier effect of joint action. In parallel, single-sector action will make attention to adolescents’ needs normative in all sectors – the Adolescent Well-being in All Policies Approach.
- The evidence is clear: the smartest investments are coordinated investments in health and education that reinforce each other. School health programmes are among the most common public health programmes. They are feasible in all settings, deliver significant gains for human capital and are cost-effective. Realizing the potential of every learner and every school requires transition to health-promoting education systems that embrace enhancing learners’ health and well-being as a core mission. The WHO and UNESCO Global Standards for Health Promoting Schools provide a framework for countries to adopt this more holistic and system-oriented approach to school health at all levels of the educational system.
- Adolescent-responsive health systems are key to achieving UHC. To guarantee explicit, ongoing, dedicated attention to issues of adolescent health and well-being within the health sector, countries may consider establishing an adolescent health focal point in the ministry of health, with responsibilities for championing adolescent health and well-being within the ministry, coordinating systematic attention to adolescent needs in all health programmes and serving as a liaison for multisectoral action.
- Countries should ensure that adolescents’ expectations and perspectives are heard in national programming processes. Adolescent leadership and participation should be institutionalized and actively supported during the design, implementation and M&E of programmes for adolescent health and well-being.
- Adolescents are a very diverse group, with diverse needs. “Leave no one behind” should be a key principle in programming for adolescent health and well-being. A concern for equity, with due attention to age, sex, disability and, in particular, vulnerability, should inform all stages of programming, from setting goals, targets and objectives through planning interventions, services and activities to defining indicators and monitoring progress and achievements.
- To assure sustainability, responsibility for funding programmes for adolescent health and well-being should be shifted towards domestic resources by including a focus on adolescents in national sectoral strategies, investment plans and budgets. Leveraging domestic resources for adolescent well-being will require better advocacy, based on investment cases for adolescent health priorities in the context of sectoral plans and budgets. External funding opportunities such as applications to the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) provide additional opportunities to increase funding.
This chapter describes implementation areas and strategies to achieve the overarching goals of improving adolescent health and well-being and equity in health outcomes. The chapter starts by identifying the common elements of programming for adolescent health and well-being that are summarized in the logical framework (section 5.1). It then presents an overview of how to design a programme, taking into consideration possible pathways (section 5.2.1) and various ways of sectors working together (section 5.2.2). Specific aspects of programming for adolescent health and well-being in humanitarian and fragile settings are described in section 5.2.7, and gender-transformative approaches, in section 5.2.8. This chapter then describes, in section 5.3, WHAT needs to be done, by addressing implementation areas and strategies in each of the key sectors. Throughout the chapter, practical examples are provided of how programming has been applied in various countries.
There is some overlap between the implementation areas and strategies described in this chapter and some of the organizational, structural and macro-level interventions described in Chapter 3, due to their similar nature. For the convenience of the reader, when there is such overlap, we list the implementation areas and strategies along with other priorities for programming, even if it has also been mentioned as an intervention area in Chapter 3.
What is new in this chapter?
A revised logical framework for programming, integrating well-being domains
A better description of the complementarity of different approaches to programming for adolescent health and well-being
New evidence from the global analysis of school health programmes
Key implementation strategies in health and other sectors updated based on the latest guidance
