A Familiar Face: Violence in the lives of children and adolescents

This report presents the most current data on four specific forms of violence – violent discipline and exposure to domestic abuse during early childhood; violence at school; violent deaths among adolescents; and sexual violence in childhood and adolescence. The statistics reveal that children experience violence across all stages of childhood, in diverse settings, and often at the hands of the trusted individuals with whom they interact daily.

Key facts highlighted in the report:  

• Close to 300 million (3 in 4) children aged 2 to 4 worldwide experience violent discipline by their caregivers on a regular basis; 250 million (around 6 in 10) are punished by physical means.
• Worldwide, 1 in 4 (176 million) children under age 5 live with a mother who is a victim of intimate partner violence.
• Worldwide, close to 130 million (slightly more than 1 in 3) students between the ages of 13 and 15 experience bullying.
• 732 million (1 in 2) school-age children between 6 and 17 years live in countries where corporal punishment at school is not fully prohibited.
• Worldwide, around 15 million adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have experienced forced sex in their lifetime.

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Sex in the shadow of HIV: A systematic review of prevalence, risk factors, and interventions to reduce sexual risk-taking among HIV-positive adolescents and youth in sub-Saharan Africa

Globally significant progress has been made in the fight to end HIV. However, rates of new infections continue to increase among 15-25 year old youth in sub-Saharan Africa. 

This study by Elona Toska, Marija Pantelic, Franziska Meinck, Katharina Keck, Roxanna Haghighat and Lucie Cluver synthesizes the extant research on prevalence, factors associated with, and interventions to reduce sexual risk-taking among HIV-positive adolescents and youth in sub-Saharan Africa.

Click here to read the full study.

Good Practice Guide: Adolescent HIV programming, READY – Here we come!

A greater understanding of HIV in high prevalence countries has increased awareness of the need to prioritise adolescents in HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

This Good Practice Guide was developed by International HIV/AIDS Alliance to offer programme managers and service providers concrete implementation guidance and support as they seek to address adolescents’ needs more effectively. It is intended to shape a provider’s approach and work so that adolescents living with HIV and those from key populations can obtain the services they need and live healthy, productive lives.  

Click here to download the Good Practice Guide 

Promising Practices in Integrating HIV and SRH Services for Adolescents and Young People Living with HIV

Evidence shows that adolescents and young people access to comprehensive SRH information and services leads to improved health outcomes. Currently many existing SRH services are not comprehensive and do not meet the unique needs of adolescents and young people. This promising practice brief highlights successful facility- level models that respond to the unique SRH service needs of AYPLHIV.

This document draws on data from six surveys submitted from PATA network members and partners through a call for promising models of practice in comprehensive HIV and SRH services.

Click here to download the brief. 

Promising Practices in Peer Support for Adolescents and Young People Living with HIV

The principles of peer engagement are increasingly being applied to support populations of adolescents and young people living with HIV (AYPLHIV). As a critical key population of people living with, and at risk of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, a focus on peer support is timely. This promising practice brief highlights the importance of peer-to-peer dialogue and engagement as both a significant challenge and a powerful opportunity.

Click here to download the brief. 

UNICEF New Series of Research Methods briefs to Strengthen Evidence on Adolescents

Of the 1.6 MILLION adolescents living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 1.2 million are located in Eastern and Southern Africa (UNICEF, 2015d). Adolescents is a period of physical, intellectual and social developmental changes that may put an adolescent at a higher risk of vulnerability. Especially for adolescents living in poor resource settings and those living with or affected by HIV.

New HIV infection rate in adolescents is the only age-group in which there has been little progress, as such there has been a recent focus on to call for programmes and policies that are sensitive the specific needs of adolescents wellbeing. Despite this comprehensive data collection systems and research for effective interventions were lacking.

With the aim of improving efforts to collect rigorous evidence for programmes and policies on adolescent health and well-being. UNICEF Innocenti in partnership with Columbia University and experts from the Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Well-being recently released a series of briefs. These briefs provide a review of contemporary research methodologies for adolescent well-being in low- and middle-income countries and will assist a wide range of professionals and stakeholders who conduct, commission or interpret research findings to make decisions about programming, policy and advocacy.

1. Improving the methodological quality of research in adolescent well-being
2. Data and indicators to measure adolescent health, social development and well-being 
3. Inclusion with protection: Obtaining informed consent when conducting research with adolescents 
4. Research with disadvantaged, vulnerable and/or marginalized adolescents 
5. Adolescent participation in research: Innovation, rationale and next steps 
6. How to measure enabling and supportive systems for adolescent health 
7. Methodologies to capture the multidimensional effects of economic strengthening interventions -

This initiative was funded by the UK Department for International Development. The Editors of the series were John Santelli, MD, MPH, Columbia University and Nikola Balvin, PsyD, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti.

Source: https://www.unicef-irc.org/article/1590/