From Advocacy to Action in Global Adolescent Health

In May 2016, The Lancet published a report titled, “Our Future: A Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing,” the culmination of three years of work from a geographically diverse interdisciplinary group. The report argued that healthy growth across adolescence and young adulthood shapes life course and intergenerational trajectories so that health investments yield a “triple dividend.” With current global interest in adolescent health at an unprecedented level, it outlines three next steps to advance from advocacy to effective action: (1) there is a pressing need for comprehensive and integrated strategies, inclusive of, but extending beyond, sexual and reproductive health, and HIV; (2) interventions should address both adolescent health service coverage and determinants of health that lie in sectors such as education, justice, transport, and industry and employment, as well as families and local communities; and (3) scale-up of responses will require not only investments in country-level capacities for measuring need and responding with evidence-based practice but also the establishment of processes for accountability and meaningful youth engagement