As agreed by the young people and experts across the world, adolescent well-being is achieved when ‘Adolescents thrive and are able to achieve their full potential.’

It covers any and all issues in our lives. This includes good health (both physical and mental health!), nutrition, education, employability, connectedness, resilience, safety and security, protection from violence, which all contribute to our own well-being.

Academics, researchers, policy makers, programme implementers and young people have examined policy and programming implications related to adolescent health and well-being through a series of fifteen background papers. The fifteen background papers summarize the key policy and programming issues that must be addressed by programmes that aim to promote adolescent well-being.

Click here for the background papers

To advance the adolescent well-being framework in policies and programmes, key partners are working towards a Global Forum for Adolescents in 2023. This aims to drive impact at the country level by serving as a commitment-making milestone for policy shifts, programme redesign and enhanced financial investments for adolescent programmes and services.

Investment in adolescents delivers the “triple dividend”. This means improving health and well-being now, enhancing it throughout the life course and contributing to the health and well-being of future generations.

On top of this, a thriving adolescent population fuels economic growth helping to increase productivity, decrease health expenditure and reduce inequities across generations.

Every adolescent has the right to a safe environment – including the right to food, water, housing as well as physical security – and also the right to claim education, skills and competencies.

Also, every adolescent should have self-esteem, a sense of agency and be able to make meaningful choices. This includes the capacity for self-expression and self-direction appropriate to their evolving capacities and stage of development. Every adolescent should have the capability to be socially, culturally and civically active. And equipped to contribute to change and development in their own lives and communities.

Vital areas include: identity - feeling comfortable in your own self and with identity(s), including physical, cultural, social and sexual identity; purpose – every adolescent having a sense of purpose, desire to succeed and optimism about the future; resilience – being quipped to handle adversities both now and in the future, in a way that is appropriate to a young person’s evolving capacities and stage of development; and fulfilment - feeling that they are fulfilling their potential now and will be able to do so in the future.

Adolescents are entitled to information and services that meet all their needs. This includes information and services relating to noncommunicable diseases, injuries, healthy eating and nutrition, mental well-being, risks of tobacco and other substance abuse, physical activity, social support and the cultivation of healthy relationships. Provision of these should be consistent with adolescents’ evolving capacities, and free of stigma and discrimination, and should uphold their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

And adolescents face multiple barriers in accessing the knowledge, information, health-care services and commodities they need.

Most of their health and well-being issues are preventable or treatable, but appropriate care and services for adolescents are often either inadequate or absent. In addition, many service providers do not fully understand their needs. Age-specific challenges can be exacerbated by gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, location, education level, poverty, marital status, sexual orientation and gender identity, and migratory status, among other factors.

Adolescents have not benefited from the reduction in mortality seen in younger children. While deaths in children under five halved during the Millennium Development Goals period, reduction in adolescent mortality has stalled. Each year there are over 1.1 million adolescent deaths. Major contributors include road traffic injuries, suicide, interpersonal violence, HIV/AIDS and diarrhoeal diseases as well as ‘maternal conditions’ as a contributor to mortality for adolescent girls.

Achieving the SDGs including universal health coverage (SDG Target 3.8), requires keeping adolescents informed and healthy, so they can survive and thrive both now and in adulthood, as recognized in the United Nations Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health. However, to fulfil the promises of the SDGs, further support and commitment are required to deliver for adolescents, especially those most at risk of being left behind.