Child, Adolescent & Life-Course Health

Overview

Children and adolescents are often reached through systems designed for someone else - schools, family services, adult clinics or short-term campaigns. Yet adolescence is a period when prevention, health behaviour, identity, stigma and access to care can shape health for decades. WEMA's related work asks how services can become more relevant to young people and how earlier interventions can alter later risk.

The Theme connects HPV vaccination and integrated adolescent-health delivery, sexual and reproductive-health stigma, adolescent obesity/NCD prevention, nutrition research and capacity building, and maternal/early-life health pathways. These areas are linked by a life-course perspective: risk and resilience accumulate, and prevention is stronger when it begins before disease is established.

Participatory design, community engagement and the perspectives of adolescents, caregivers and frontline providers are central to understanding what makes services acceptable and usable.