Global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents: Standards and criteria

Global initiatives are urging countries to prioritize quality as a way of reinforcing human rights-based approaches to health. Yet evidence from both high- and low-income countries shows that services for adolescents are highly fragmented, poorly coordinated and uneven in quality. Pockets of excellent practice exist, but, overall, services need significant improvement and should be brought into conformity with existing guidelines.

The WHO/UNAIDS global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents aim to assist policy-makers and health service planners to improve the quality of health-care services, so that adolescents find it easier to obtain the health services that they need to promote, protect, and improve their health and well-being, according to their needs. 

This publication presents global standards for quality health-care services for adolescents, as well as an implementation guide and monitoring tools.

The adolescent health indicators recommended by the Global Action for Measurement of Adolescent Health

This document is an interactive guide for the uniform collection, compilation, reporting, and use of adolescent health data.

Adolescence is a critical stage in life for physical, cognitive and emotional development, shaping future health and well-being. Comprehensive measurement of adolescent health is essential to prioritize health issues, guide interventions and track progress. However, global, regional and national adolescent health measurement has historically been inconsistent and incomplete.

The Global Action for Measurement of Adolescent health (GAMA) Advisory Group has been established by the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with United Nations partners to support efforts to focus adolescent health measurement on the most important issues and to improve alignment across different measurement initiatives.

The indicators are intended to guide policy and programming for adolescents, and to assist in identifying topics in which more detailed health assessments and additional programming are needed. The last chapter in this guidance document describes how this can be done, based on the approach suggested in the Accelerated Action for the Health of Adolescents (AA-HA!) guidance.

This document presents a list of 47 indicators recommended by GAMA for measurement of adolescent health, which are applicable to all adolescent population subgroups and span Well-being Outcomes.