Six actions to improve adolescent health (2025)

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Understanding and addressing the specific health risks and needs adolescents face today is key to improving their future health, as well as for broader social and economic stability.

Adolescence is a period of physical, emotional and social development and opportunities. It can be a time of challenges, with major physical, emotional and social changes fuelling specific health risks and needs, including for their sexual and reproductive health and rights.  

Much more is understood today about adolescent health thanks to research. Policies and programmes can support adolescents’ health, particularly when they build on the evidence curated in a special supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health on trends in the last decade, progress, challenges and effective approaches to addressing adolescent health. However, as the new publication shows, progress lags in some key areas.

Moreover, theeconomic cost of failure to address the health needs of 1.3 billion adolescents is enormous, estimated at US$ 4.1 trillion per year between 2024–2050. 

As a new United Nations declaration tackles collective responsibility towards future generations, crucially recognizing young people as active providers and contributors, WHO highlights six areas for immediate action to improve adolescent health and rights.

Prevent teenage pregnancy

An estimated 21 million adolescent girls (15–19 years) in low- and middle-income countries become pregnant each year, with half of these pregnancies unintended. The health consequences are severe, with higher risks of maternal complications than women aged 20–24 years and of adverse outcomes for their babies.  

Adolescent pregnancy also limits opportunities for education and later employment, as girls often must drop out of school when pregnant. Disparities within and across countries underscore the need to prioritize settings and populations most likely to be left behind.

Preventing pregnancy among adolescents and related mortality and morbidity are foundational to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including targets relating to maternal and newborn health.

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is one intervention shown to be effective in preventing early and unintended adolescent pregnancies, as are enabling laws and policies ensuring adolescents can access contraceptives without stigma or restrictions.    

UNFPA Albania / Besfort Kryeziu
UNFPA figures already show an increase in the number of young people using contraceptives in Albania, thanks in part to a new peer-counselling initiative.

UNICEF Uganda / Jimmy Adriko
Faida is campaigning against child marriage in Uganda.

Protect adolescent girls from harmful practices

Harmful practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) are human rights violations that are driven by gender norms that seek to control women’s sexuality.

For many adolescent girls, early pregnancy happens within the context of child marriage. One in 5 young women aged 20 to 24 years today was married before she turned 18. Although rates have declined by 20% globally since 2000, progress is uneven – and in regions with the highest prevalence there has barely been a change.  

Today, 230 million girls and women have undergone FGM, representing an increase of 15% in absolute numbers of those living with its consequences. FGM has no health benefits and it harms girls and women in many ways.Furthermore, treatment of the health complications of FGM is estimated to cost health systems US$ 1.4 billion per year.    

Achieving the SDG goal of gender equality and target to eliminate harmful practices by 2030 requires accelerated effort. Evidence shows that progress is made in countries where there is economic development, poverty reduction and educational attainment for girls at the secondary level, and access to employment. 

Reduce sexually transmitted infections

The number of new sexually transmitted infections (STIs) annually among older adolescents (aged 15–19 years) is not declining nearly quickly enough to reach the 2030 SDG targets. In 2023, there were an estimated 1.9 million adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 years living with HIV, compared to 1.2 million adolescent boys and young men.

Young people (aged 15–24) bear the burden of close to 30% of all new HIV infections globally, with girls and young women (15–24) accounting for close to 60% of new infections among that age group.

Adolescents and young people belonging to marginalized groups are disproportionately at risk of acquiring STIs and HIV. Regressive laws can marginalize these groups and increase health risks. Currently, 67 countries have laws criminalizing same-sex relationships, posing a threat to the physical, emotional and social safety and well-being of LGBTQI+ populations.

Preventing STIs and HIV among adolescents requires that they are empowered to have safe sex and have access to information, education and methods of prevention that are provided in non-stigmatizing ways.Adolescent-responsive sexual and reproductive health services are essential. The meaningful engagement of adolescents and young people in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of health services and in decisions regarding their own care is key as an integral component of effective adolescent HIV care.

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has also been shown to improve uptake of condoms and reduce STIs.However, there has been a significant rise in opposition to the provision of CSE and efforts to ensure that adolescents have the knowledge and means to protect themselves, increasing the risk of both short and long-term health harms.

WHO / SRH / Maria Gutu
Urologist Dr Radu consults with a patient at the YK Neovita Centre in Chișinău, Moldova, on 23 June 2022.

UN Women / Gustavo Stephan
Using sport as a tool to reduce gender inequalities and develop self-esteem and life skills among adolescent girls.

End violence against adolescents

A quarter of adolescent girls (15–19 years) who have been in a relationship have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime – a figure largely unchanged in the last decade.  

Almost one-third of young teens (11–17 years) worldwide have experienced bullying, with boys slightly more at risk of bullying in schools than girls.  

Violence against adolescent girls is preventable but requires multi-sectoral action. RESPECT women, a WHO framework for policy makers, highlights the importance of economic empowerment, challenging social norms that condone violence, and school-based prevention strategies.  

Life-skills interventions are also critical to help young people manage anger and conflict. INSPIRE, a WHO programme for ending violence against children, highlights the importance of whole-school approaches, as well as parenting support for positive and nurturing parent-child relationships.

Address the mental health crisis 

Depression and anxiety are among the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents. 

Globally, 1 in 7 young people aged 10–19-year-olds experiences a mental disorder, accounting for 13% of the global burden of disease in this age group. Girls who are pregnant, who have experienced abuse, in early and forced marriages or who have been subjected to FGM are at even greater risk of mental health conditions. 

Other factors contributing to adverse mental health include stress related to adversity, such as poverty and violence, food insecurity, conflict, forced migration, unemployment, gender inequality, peer pressure, isolation as well as quality of life at home and in relationships. Exposure to media including social media is increasingly having an impact on young people’s mental health. 

Adolescents with mental health conditions should have access to age-appropriate early detection and treatment in communities, without over-medicalizing or institutionalizing them. Several settings, including schools, health facilities and recreational clubs, can deliver psychosocial support and training to strengthen adolescents’ capacity to regulate emotions, enhance alternatives to risk-taking behaviours, build resilience to manage adversity and promote supportive social networks with benefits that last throughout life. 

Meaningful engagement of young people in designing services and advocacy, and supporting caregivers with parenting skills, are important aspects of multi-sectoral programmes for the promotion and protection of adolescents’ mental health. 

Getty Images / Images of Empowerment / Mansi Midha
Led by local peer educators, these groups discuss a wide range of adolescent health and wellbeing issues, such as mental health, substance misuse, injuries and violence, nutrition, non-communicable diseases, and sexual and reproductive health.

Getty Images / Images of Empowerment / Mansi Midha
At an anganwadi center (government-run daycare center) in Patahi Village of Mushahari Block, Poonam, an auxiliary nurse midwife, counsels Pooja and other young girls from the community on reproductive health and nutrition.

Promote healthy nutrition among adolescents 

Problems from both under-nutrition and over-nutrition in adolescence can have life-long consequences. Healthy eating habits promoted during this period have the potential to avert noncommunicable diseases later in life.  

Micronutrient deficiencies are a key nutritional challenge faced by adolescents. For example, anaemia among adolescent girls, coupled with high rates of adolescent pregnancy, can have consequences for their own health and extend to the health of children they may have.  

The prevalence of overweight and obesity among adolescents has risen dramatically, particularly in the last decade. Nearly 1 in 5 adolescents are overweight, the same figure for boys and girls.  

Being overweight in adolescence affects immediate and future health, with risk of early onset of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Adolescents with obesity are also more likely to experience depression, face stigma and discrimination and bullying, and have their school performance affected.  

Obesity prevention and management among adolescents requires supporting healthy eating, physical activity, sleeping habits, limiting screen time and consumption of sugar. Restrictions on selling of alcohol and tobacco and marketing of foods high in sugars, salt and fats to teenagers can promote healthy nutrition.  

Adolescents today must navigate critical transitions in their health and development in a world facing a distressing combination of crises. Climate change, humanitarian emergencies, changing demographics and rising inequalities, as well as a backlash against gender equality and human rights, threaten to overwhelm their future prospects.  

The time to act is now:

Expand support for very young adolescents (10–14 years). Evidence shows that unequal and harmful social norms leading to risk behaviours form early in adolescence, making it a crucial period for intervention.
Enact and implement empowering laws and policies. It’s time to change the many laws and policies which fail to protect and promote adolescents’ rights, create barriers to accessing services, and ignore adolescents’ evolving capacities to make autonomous choices and decisions. Protections also need to be in place against harmful commercial marketing of unhealthy products.
Ensure adolescent-responsive services and programmes. Stigma and discrimination hinder adolescents’ access to vital healthcare in many settings. Age-appropriate, adolescent-responsive services, particularly for sexual and reproductive health, are critical.
Invest in more and better data for adolescents’ health. More easily accessible and consistently reported health data for adolescents, disaggregated by age and sex, is needed to support integrated, adolescent-responsive approaches.
Facilitate meaningful engagement of adolescents in decision-making and in the full cycle of programmes that affect them. Adolescents have agency and capabilities. They are not just beneficiaries of programmes and policies that affect their future, but key partners in design, planning, evaluation and decision-making regarding their own care and for their peers.
Prioritize where progress is threatened, stalled or reversed. Adolescents living in humanitarian settings, who have disabilities, who are from minority ethnic or indigenous groups, who are discriminated against due to their sexual orientation are at higher risk of a range of adverse health outcomes. They need particular attention in policies, research and programmes.
Finance interventions which will have impact on the health and wellbeing of adolescents and help us achieve the SDGs. The return on investment in key areas of adolescent health is estimated to be US$ 9.60 for every US$ 1 invested.

For further information:

Watch our new film “Investing in our future: The health of adolescents”

Learn more about the work of WHO:

Adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights

Adolescent and young adult health

Page published on 11 October 2024