The world today contains 1.8 billion youth between the ages of 10 and 24—the most populous age group in the world. Youth in transition today shape urbanization trends, civil society, and needs of the aging across the spectrum. As tomorrow’s potential leaders, today’s youth are challenged by violence, climate change, shifting family structures, and intergenerational transmission of poverty, educational disadvantage, and gender discrimination. Highly vulnerable to the health threats of injury, substance abuse, sexual risk, and mental illness, their choices and the consequences of their behaviors not only shape individual trajectories but also influence the fate of entire societies and nations. While contemporary adolescents face challenges, they also demonstrate a technological sophistication in a digitally interconnected world—and greater access than their parents to new ideas, information, and innovation. With the right policies and investments, they can become the problem-solvers, entrepreneurs, and change agents of the coming decades.
Youth: Investing in the Future
Subthemes
Vulnerability & Agency
Education & Workforce
Prevention & Policy
VULNERABILITY & AGENCY
We often think of youth as a time for freedom and exploration. But many youth across the world lack this “right to adolescence,” are pressed by family poverty and social expectations to leave school, work long hours despite child labor laws, and, for girls, marry young. Exclusion, marginalization, stigma and gender discrimination further increase youth vulnerability, and impede their power to be active agents in shaping their future. How do we ensure that country-specific laws, regulations and policies reflect the commitments made to international treaties guaranteeing the rights of adolescents and youth? Addressing the health dimensions of the world’s rapidly expanding adolescent population will require new thinking at the nexus of education, labor and economics, design and technology, public policy, religion, and society, and the media.
Below are examples of resources relevant to the overarching themes. Previously highlighted resources and additional resources can be found in our digital Repository.
Resources:
Prohibiting Gender-Affirming Medical Care for Youth
This report from the Williams Institute explores the impact of state laws restricting transgender youths’ access to gender-affirming care. As of March 2023, 30 states have restricted or are considering restricting access to care. Legislation typically includes penalties for health care providers and sometimes families, and several of the laws prevent insurance companies from offering coverage for care. With previous evidence clearly linking increased access to affirming services to lower odds of suicidal ideation and better mental health, the national trend of conservative legislation also raises serious questions about the impact on adolescent mental health.
Progress on Children's Well-Being: Centering Child Rights in the 2030 Agenda
This report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) examines progress on children’s health and well-being worldwide, according to the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The report examines data on 48 child-related SDG indicators, across five key domains: survive and thrive, learning, protection from harm, safe and clean environments, and life free from poverty. The report presents the current status of countries toward targets for child well-being, and analyzes data by country income level and region. The report provides insight into the progress needed to prioritize and protect children's rights worldwide.
Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates: Key Findings of the 2023 Edition
This data publication from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Bank summarizes the key findings of the 2023 Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates, which presents data on the four estimates of prevalence and numbers for child malnutrition: child stunting, overweight, wasting, and severe wasting. It provides global, regional, and country-level estimates and trends from 2000-2022 and a guide for learners to become familiar with new indicators and data.
EDUCATION & WORKFORCE
Many of today’s youth find themselves lost in the transition between school and the job market. What would help youth stay in school, gain job skills, pursue careers, and enjoy well-being as adults? What policies and structural interventions could broaden the realistic options for youth in terms of employment, earnings, and income security? The emergence of a large youth population can have a profound effect on any country. However, whether that effect is positive or negative depends largely on how well governments respond to their needs and enable them to engage fully and meaningfully in school, civic, and economic affairs. All sectors can contribute to the development of adolescents into capable adults—providing role models and mentors, programs for education and training, and opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. Global and national efforts to connect business sector opportunities with education and skills building may help create successful models to bridge this vital transition to adulthood.
Below are examples of resources relevant to the overarching themes. Previously highlighted resources and additional resources can be found in our digital Repository.
Resources:
Center for Collegiate Mental Health 2023 Annual Report
This report from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) presents descriptive data on various domains of mental health and factors related to treatment and care for college students in the United States. The data included in this report was gathered from 195 colleges and universities across the U.S., describing 185,114 de-identified college students seeking mental health treatment. The report examines trends among students seeking mental health services, including prior treatment and “threat-to-self" characteristics, along with trends in various mental health indicators, including depression, anxiety, family distress, and substance use.
International Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a specialized United Nations agency that works with representatives of governments, employers, and workers from 187 Member States globally. The ILO sets labor standards and principles, develops work policies, and designs programs promoting decent work for all. The ILO’s mission is to advance social justice and ensure human and labor rights are preserved and to promote rights at work, expand decent employment opportunities, and improve social protection worldwide.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has a multi-pronged approach to sustainable development, as the organization supports a wide range of initiatives. The organization is the only UN agency whose mandate covers all aspects of education and UNESCO provides leadership in education, strengthens educational systems worldwide, and responds to global education challenges through the lens of gender equality. UNESCO seeks to protect and promote culture and diversity through the establishment of world heritage sites.
PREVENTION & POLICY
Adolescence is a period when youth may be exposed to high-risk activities that can have lifelong health consequences: high-speed driving, unsafe sex, smoking, alcohol and drug use, or exploitation and abuse as youth are challenged to create meaningful patterns of activities and relationships. What conversations, innovations, and structural changes are necessary to equip youth to choose and support health-generating behaviors? Interventions from within and outside the health sector—for example related to motor vehicle laws, age of consent, child labor, and limits on media exposure and advertising—can all contribute to the wide range of opportunities to support adolescent health. Where are the “pulse points” of practice and policy that will net the greatest investments in advancing health for the intersecting generations of tomorrow?
Below are examples of resources relevant to the overarching themes. Previously highlighted resources and additional resources can be found in our digital Repository.
Resources:
Global Report on Trends in Prevalence of Tobacco Use 2000-2030
This data publication from the World Health Organization (WHO) summarizes the latest global trends in the prevalence of tobacco use. This report presents estimates of tobacco use prevalence for 2022 and includes projected trends to the year 2030. The report presents global, regional, and country-level data estimates and trends, analyzing number of tobacco users, types of tobacco products used, and patterns by age and sex. The report provides data on progress towards meeting tobacco use reduction targets, and the prevalence of cigarette smoking and smokeless tobacco among adults and adolescents.
Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, or PMNCH, is a global alliance of over 1,300 partner organizations focused on advocacy for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health and well-being. Established in 2005 and hosted by the World Health Organization (WHO), PMNCH focuses on partner engagement, knowledge synthesis, community outreach, and digital communications to advocate for policy and health services that better serve women, children, and adolescents globally.
Firearm Suicide in the United States
This fact sheet from Everytown for Gun Safety provides key findings and recommendations about firearm suicide in the United States. Firearm suicide is a public health crisis in the US, as an estimated 25,000 Americans die by firearm suicide annually, including more than 3,100 young people. The fact sheet covers topics spanning access to guns, demographic patterns in firearm suicides, and trends. It offers recommendations for reducing the crisis through a multi-faceted approach that includes building public awareness, encouraging secure firearm storage, limiting the easy and immediate acquisition of firearms, removing firearms from individuals in times of crisis, and instituting firearm purchase permits.
Regional Profile
Mental Health and Media in Malawi
In Malawi, there is no word for depression in the local language of Chichewa—making an already complex topic even more difficult to discuss. To simultaneously build a language around mental health and spark conversations about the common challenges youth face, Farm Radio International implemented participatory radio programs—coupled with teacher training, school curriculums, and radio listening clubs. The radio programs, also tackling topics like sex and drug use, are designed with the goal of reducing stigma about mental health disorders among young Malawians and their families and communities. “We have created a situation where they [the youth] are free to talk to me about whatever is on their minds,” said Dick Shumba, the rapper and host of the Malawian program, Nkhawa Njee ‘Yonse Bo’ (Depression free, life is cool). More than 500,000 youth have been reached through the weekly radio shows about mental health in Malawi and Tanzania.
Population Snapshot
Youth and Human Rights
As youth around the world transition into adolescence, they may face health risks related to gang violence, sexual exploitation, early marriage, unemployment and lack of skill-training, and risky travel and migration to escape danger at home. If teens are to fulfill their potential and thrive, a human-rights-based framework is needed. This is the message of a book, Human Rights and Adolescence, edited by human rights lawyer and Harvard professor, Jacqueline Bhabha. The book draws on the expertise of 25 research scholars, activists, and educators across multiple disciplines to explore the process and meanings of adolescence; the role of trauma, stigma, and resilience in youth who group up with violence; and opportunities to engage in strategic social interventions to realize and advance adolescent rights. Learn more about the book.
Sector Perspective
School and Employment: What Works?
“Crosswalk” solutions can help link education with work-based learning opportunities in the business sector, says Harvard Graduate School of Education Emeritus Professor Robert B. Schwartz. Building on European models where apprenticeship opportunities are streamlined early into school programs in adolescence, Schwartz helped co-found Boston Compact, a partnership between schools and the city’s business community to empower youth access to jobs and job training. Collaborating with the Boston Private Industry Council, the partnership connects over 3000 youth each year with jobs and internships. The program’s success has inspired others to similar models; one of these, the “Pathways to Prosperity Network,” partners with eight states to “build out” career pathways to help youth gain marketable skills in high-demand fields such as health care, information technology, and manufacturing.
Featured
Stop Gender-Related Killing
Every day, women and girls worldwide are murdered because of their gender, and too often, perpetrators are not held accountable. Women are killed as a result of intimate partner violence, in the name of “honor,” in connection of accusations of witchcraft, and armed conflict. First proposed in 2013, the resolution “Taking action against gender-related killing of women and girls” was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2015. The resolution urges member states to strengthen gender-sensitive approaches criminal justice through appropriate punishment of perpetrators and support of victims; to share and implement best legal practices and existing international agreements; and to collect more accurate and consistent statistics that foster better understanding and response to trends of gender-related killing and related violence. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also issued a booklet summarizing recommendations, tools, and assistance that United Nations entities can provide to assist member states in taking action against gender-related killing.