{"id":5388,"date":"2021-03-04T16:12:50","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmtraining.org\/fr\/responsive-systems-meet-adolescent-reproductive-health-needs\/"},"modified":"2021-03-04T16:12:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:12:50","slug":"responsive-systems-meet-adolescent-reproductive-health-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmtraining.org\/fr\/responsive-systems-meet-adolescent-reproductive-health-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Responsive Systems Meet Adolescent Reproductive Health Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mary convinced her friend to take an hour-long walk with her to the nearest clinic after school one day. She wanted to learn more about how to prevent pregnancy. When the pair arrived, they found the clinic was already closed for the day. Disappointed and frustrated, she never returned. Six months later, Mary became pregnant. After delivering her baby at a facility, she was shamed by her health care provider for becoming pregnant while unmarried and still in school. Mary was not counseled on postpartum family planning since the doctor believed the experience of getting pregnant would deter her from having unprotected sex again. When she became pregnant less than two years after having her first child, she delivered at home for fear of being treated poorly.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the story of too many girls and young women who experience challenges accessing high-quality and respectful health services.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n

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For decades, the primary solution to address the poor quality and accessibility of health services for adolescents has been adolescent-friendly health services. Adolescent-friendly health services meet quality standards that make them accessible, acceptable, equitable, appropriate, and effective for adolescents. In practice, adolescent-friendly health services are typically implemented by providing a one \u201cyouth-friendly\u201d training to a health care provider and creating separate rooms or corners in health facilities where adolescents either wait or receive health services. In many instances, the current practice leaves many young people confused about where they are welcome and in some cases, what services are available to them.<\/p>\n

There is increasing consensus that adolescent-friendly health services\u2014as currently implemented\u2014are not consistently scalable nor sustainable. When donor funding ends, spaces for adolescents are often rapidly repurposed. It is not uncommon to visit an adolescent-friendly room in a health facility only to find it full of dusty boxes of supplies. There are still millions of adolescents who lack access to any health care, and family planning\/reproductive health (FP\/RH) care in particular. This has only worsened in the context of COVID-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nUltimately, health-care provision must evolve from adolescent-friendly projects to adolescent-responsive programmes and systems. (WHO, Health of the World’s Adolescents, 2014)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We need to evolve from relying only on separate rooms and corners to deliver services to adolescents. In response, the World Health Organization, a recently released update to the High Impact Practice Enhancement<\/a>, and those working in the adolescent and youth reproductive health field recommend an adolescent-responsive health systems approach<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What is an adolescent-responsive health systems approach?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n

Each building block of the health system\u2014including public and private sectors and communities\u2014respond to the health needs of adolescents in an adolescent-responsive system. Here are some examples of how the different system building blocks can be responsive:<\/p>\n