27 - Social Justice and Adolescent Health

Summary

Adolescents are a particularly vulnerable group of individuals in the global landscape. They are presumed to be healthy and thus garner less attention relative to age groups that shoulder the burden of disease. Greater global investment is merited to ensure the human rights of adolescents as numerous unique societal and structural challenges confront this age group. A difficulty to motivate this change is conflicting definitions of who are “adolescents” between major global agencies and funders; this hamstrings policy makers’ ability to measure or interpret adolescent health indicators. In this chapter, the authors present a case study from Rwanda so as to describe five key barriers to adolescents’ health in the country: challenge with defining “adolescence” in policy documents, fragmented policy planning and coverage, societal pressures and expectations, individual preferences, and gaps in data availability. After exploration of these barriers, the authors describe how Rwanda has progressed through building capacity for adolescents’ rights to health in the country. This model can inform policy makers who seek to bolster policies and resources that can be directed toward more effectively supporting this historically neglected group, which is our future generation.