Cate Lane, Youth Advisor for USAID shares strategies to reach youth with positive messages on health and evaluates what works and what does not based on program experience.

1. WHAT WORKS? WHAT DOESN’T?
TO EFFECTIVELY IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF
ADOLESCENTS AND YOUTH?
Cate Lane, Youth Advisor, USAID/Washington
July 13 2017

2. Why youth?
• One third of the world’s population is aged 10-24
• Pregnancy and HIV: major causes of youth illness and death
among youth
• 16 million women 15–19 years give birth: 11% of all births, 95% in
LMIC
• 10% of girls are mothers by age 16 years (SSA, SEA)
• 42% of new HIV infections to all people 15 and over are to adolescents
15-24
HEALTH INVESTMENTS IN TODAY’S ADOLESCENTS HAVE
IMMEDIATE AND FUTURE RETURNS

3. What do we want for youth?
PRH focuses on ages 10-19
• Delay first pregnancy to
at least age 18 years
• Ensure birth to
pregnancy intervals of
at least 24 months
USAID’s Youth in Development Policy Goal: Improve the capacities and enable th
e aspirations of youth (aged 10 -29) so that they can contribute to and benefit fro
m more stable, democratic, and prosperous communities and nations.

4. Challenges to Achieving These
Outcomes
• Persistent norms: early marriage and childbearing
• Biases and stigma around adolescent sexuality
• Unmet need for contraception: both married and
unmarried adolescents
• Lack of access to appropriate information and services at
scale
• Negative perceptions of youth and adolescents
• NIMBY attitudes among policy makers
• Poverty and lack of opportunity
• Limited engagement
• And so on………………………..

5. Considerations to achieving
Be clear about your desired outcome and
plan accordingly. Keep the following in
mind:
• program against the diversity of
adolescents;
• ensure adolescent access to all methods;
• forgo separate services and make
services that already serve adolescents
“youth friendly;”
• partner with pharmacies and drug shops
as sources of contraception; and
• support all health workers to provide
“youth friendly” care.

6. Developing Life Skills

7. Key Implementation Needs
• Adolescents have access to full method mix
• Health services are age and developmentally
appropriate and integrated: PPFP, ANC, MCH, PAC,
HTC, PMTCT, ART etc
• The policy and social environment facilitates the
delivery of developmentally appropriate, gender
equitable information about sexuality and health and
addresses barriers to contraceptive and condom use
• Youth programs in other sectors integrate health
information and services

8. Successful programs address the following:
• Value girls and are gender transformative
• Help youth understand benefits of delayed sexual activity
• Increase school enrollment
• Build skills, self efficacy, agency, and confidence
• Promote a sense of future
• Use multiple channels to disseminate information
• Build adult and adolescent comfort with adolescent sexuality,
contraceptive and condom use
• Ensure access to youth friendly services that are accessible,
convenient, affordable, confidential
• Create referral networks
• Involve private sector: vouchers, social franchises.

9. Things NOT to do
• Implement ineffective
interventions and
approaches
• Implement effective
interventions without
fidelity

10. Popular but ineffective interventions
• Youth Centers:
• Don’t change SRH behavior or increase use of services
• Used by older male youth
• Costly
• Peer Education:
• Little impact on intended beneficiaries (e.g. contraceptive
uptake
• Greatest impact on peer educators
• High profile meetings
• No impact on harmful practices

11. Interventions that are delivered ineffectively
• Comprehensive Sexuality Education
• Inadequate attention to factors that ensure success
• Weak content
• Teachers uncomfortable with content
• Little or no linkages to services
• Youth friendly services
• Providers are not trained
• Facilities are not welcoming
• Adolescents lack awareness of services
• Community members are not supportive

12. Little or no systematic and sustained approaches
• Inattention to whole system of youth development:
• Cross-sectoral
• Integrated
• Coordinated
• Inadequate intervention dosage
• Short-term
• Donor driven
• No plan for scale

13. A call to action!
1. Youth as partners
2. Stop doing what doesn’t work.
3. Fidelity. Dosage. Scale.
4. Innovate and evaluate!
 Positive youth development
 Cross-sectoral programming