Adolescence appears to be an essential aspect of life associated with life-disrupting events such as storm and stress. From the perception of health development, adolescence is perceived as the period of a health risk as the majority of the youths focus on experimenting and discovering different aspects of their life. According to Reisner et al., (2015), 25-50% of the teens are involved in risk behaviors likely to result in adverse health effects such as early pregnancies and HIV/AIDS. These problems occur as children change from junior to high schools reporting cases of suicidal thoughts, substance use, and abuse, thus calling for a need for intervention mechanisms. Success mitigation health challenges facing adolescents should involve healthcare approaches, community, and school-based strategies. The objective of this program is to increase the proportion of adolescents who receive wellness checkup in the next 12 months.
Objectives of Health Adolescent Education Program
The primary objective for the education program is to increase the number of adolescents who have received wellness checkup in the last 12 months. The goals for addressing adolescent health risks are to mitigate mortality rates, mental illness, and diseases with adverse effects on the health of youths. The high mortality rate associated with road accidents, sexually transmitted infections, and injuries experienced by the adolescents call for a need of designing a viable program capable of addressing these issues. Adolescents between the age of 10 and 17 years constitute 22% of the US population (DiClemente, Hansen, & Ponton, 2013). This percentage of the population indicates that there is a need for a health care program to prepare adolescents to succeed in this transformation stage. The Adolescent healthcare program should seek to guide youths to distinguish between behaviors that could harm their health from the experiments that could lead to unhealthy behavior. Though risk-taking is a crucial aspect in helping teens in discovering talents, there needs to be the intervention of adults to control the behavior of adolescents. This approach will play an essential role in helping teens to differentiate between positive and adverse effects associated with a particular risk.
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In the absence of adolescent health program, adolescents stand a chance of experiencing significant adverse effects associated with risk behaviors. The adolescent healthcare indicators to be used include accessing health of adolescents in the nation, measuring the level of collaboration across institutions, and accessing actions undertaken at the national, state, and community level to address challenges associated with adolescent health. Adolescents are in the transition age, and they are vulnerable to influences from the environment and social interactions. For instance, most of the adverse effects of youths come from youths and families members. Unavailability of social control programs to assist adolescents in increases vulnerability to health risks such as sexually transmitted diseases, car accidents, mental illness, suicide, and homicide (DiClemente, Hansen, & Ponton, 2013). Adolescents who receive proper guidelines to pass through a transformation stage turn to be healthy and pursue future with light of experiencing significant improvements in life. However, majority of the youths end up using substances such as alcohol and Heroine.
Adolescent health care program will play an essential role in mitigating deaths that result from violence among youths. According to the World Health Organization Report (2018), violence appears to the third leading cause of death among adolescents. Teenagers tend to turn violent either at a young age or when they grow to adulthood, depending on their experience during the adolescence stage. Violence issues among youths are severe among male adolescents than girls. For instance, a third of adolescents from low and middle-income nations show emotional and physical violent behaviors when interacting with people (World Health Organization, 2018). At the global level, 84 million youths aged 15-19 years show extreme reactions in their social interactions.
Mental illness and health effects associated with drug abuse are recorded as the highest cause of deaths among adolescents. Mental illness makes youth vulnerable to mental health-related diseases such as depression (Reisner et al., 2015). Depression presents some of the characteristics that expose adolescents to illness and disabilities and suicide cases that terminate the lives of many people in society. Adolescents with psychological issues have adverse effects on daily activities such as academic performance and coordinating activities in real life. These conditions are worse in circumstances where people live in poverty, thus feeling devaluated and depressed. These challenges are common in situations where schools and communities do not have programs for helping students strengthen ties and share problems experienced in life.
Health Risk and Death Prevalence Associated with Adolescence Health
Majority of adolescents create issues such as early pregnancies. Pregnancy rates record 11% of the births recorded across the group are by girls aged between the age of 15 and 19 years with a majority of these pregnancies recorded in less developed nations (Reisner et al., 2015). This rate is expected to increase in the future if there are no intervention mechanisms to assist adolescents in following a particular path as they experience biological transformation. A high pregnant rate indicates that the majority of the youths engage in unprotected sex, thus increasing the vulnerability of sexually transmitted diseases. For instance, there are threats of experiencing an increase in the number of adolescents with HIV. There are approximately 2.1 million adolescents across the world with HIV (World Health Organization, 2018). Though the sustainable development approach has created access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, substance abuse still contributes to HIV/AIDS and gonorrhea. This information indicates that there is a gap and lack of awareness among adolescents regarding risks associated with unprotected sexual activities. As a result, reducing this gap increases an opportunity for achieving the adolescent health goal in the future.
Malnutrition contributes to the challenges experienced by youths. Youths enter the adolescent stage of development undernourished, exposing them to many diseases. In effect, increased vulnerability of teens to risk behavior exposes students to health-related disorders such as obesity. According to Patton et al., (2016), there is prevalence that one in every six adolescents is experiences, thus resulting in obesity. This rate is expected to grow in the future, as there are no guiding tools to help adolescents discover dietary eating habits. The program implemented for teaching youths should educate adolescents on healthy eating behaviors and various diseases such as hookworms that they need to check as they grow to adults. During adolescence, students need to have to develop healthy eating habits form good health in adulthood. This program needs to be implemented through a reduction of marketing of foods, especially those saturated with fats, sugars, and salt, contribute to the improvement of health youths.
Substance abuse exposes the lives of adolescents to road fatalities. For instance, drug abuse leads to careless driving increasing vulnerability road accidents. Statistics indicate that approximately 135,000 adolescent deaths are associated with road traffic accidents in the year 2016 (Elgar et al., 2016). This mortality statistics cover pedestrians, motorists, and cyclists. Though there exist traffic safety laws in many countries, young drivers are vulnerable to road accidents because they drive under the influence of substances. Accidents associated with drowning are also most of the problems caused by death among adolescents. For example, approximately 50,000 adolescents were drowned in the year 2016. Two-thirds of this population is boys, and they increased a chance for experiencing deaths among youths.
Suggested intervention Mechanisms for adolescent Health
Based on the adolescent health literature, it is evident that experts suggest the application of community-based approach as a viable tool to increasing the number if adolescents seeking wellness checkup by 2020. The population-based approach to improving adolescent health includes activities such as prohibiting and controlling the use of substances. The managed plan for adolescent health has an opportunity for curbing the effects associated with substance abuse and other behavioral activities that could lead to diseases among adolescents (Reisner et al., 2015). There is a need for creating laws and rules that prevent illicit drug trafficking in the community. Sale restrictions on hard substances and community-based campaigns against the use of drugs that expose the life of adolescents into health risks and injuries are effective in improving adolescent health.
The community-based campaign will increase awareness among adolescents to inform youths of the dangers associated with adolescent developmental stage. This campaign covers various issues such as avoiding unhealthy eating habits and offering possible solutions for dealing with psychological challenges. A community-based campaign should be in a position to create awareness among adolescents on the food they should eat and implement steps capable of preventing a young generation from malnutrition diseases (Patton et al., 2016). Enabling adolescents to live a better life should begin by emphasizing the importance of health among adolescents. Building life skills among adolescents need community-based campaign to ensure that there is an increase in the development of activities required in handling psychological problems likely to cause depression.
The literature also reveals that health based strategies can be applied in improving access well checkup among youths by 2020. There is also a need for building health based institutions capable of handling physical and emotional disorders that affect the lives of adolescents. The US system focuses on constructing financially sustainable and affordable health institutions for the treatment of pathology and diseases that put the life of adolescents in danger. This strategy will be in a position to reduce the financial burden spending on adolescent health as the country spends approximately $28.9 billion per year on youths (World Health Organization, 2018). There exist several offices and healthcare institutions such as offices designed to serve the community by treating youths against disorders and diseases likely to affect their future lives. However, affordability has become the most challenging issue as the majority of adolescents, and their families are incapable of seeking medical intervention for problems facing youths. Majority of the victims prefer relying on school and community-based treatment approaches, which may be ineffective in meeting the set objectives. Mitigating the health challenges experienced by adolescents requires corporation of community, school healthcare programs, and healthcare intervention strategies.
Prevention and intervention mechanisms offered at the education and schools setting have contributed to a decline in the number of adolescents facing adverse impacts associated with the adolescent development stage. Educational institutions provide an environment through which the majority of the youths get influenced to engage in either positive or harmful effects in their lives. For instance, there are more than 400 healthcare school based institutions that serve the healthcare needs of the youths (Reisner et al., 2015). Efficacy in classrooms includes approaches such as psychological development, and life skills are effective in reducing the adverse effects that may arise from adolescents’ desire to explore life. The effectiveness of this approach avails through a reduction in exposure to adverse health effects, but it does not treat the health and health effects associated with adolescents. Teacher-child relationship is critical in improving the experience of adolescents in the future, thus meeting the healthcare objective by the year 2020.
Conclusion
Young age is associated with the transition in life and exposes children to positive and risk behavior of their life. Most of the social and biological transformations in human development occur at the age of 10 and 19 years. As a result, they stand a high risk of experiencing malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, obesity, and mental health challenges. There are also issues associated with road accidents and injuries suffered by adolescents as they continue to explore their lives. For instance, the number of deaths related to health problems is on the rise with the number of adolescents using substance abuse, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS increasing in the future. As a result, reducing this challenge requires the intervention of community, family, and education programs to guide adolescents in exploring life. Effectiveness of this strategy reflects through the reduction of death rates and mental health challenges associated with youths, thus mitigating the health problem by 2020.
References
DiClemente, R. J., Hansen, W. B., & Ponton, L. E. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of adolescent health risk behavior. Springer Science & Business Media.
Elgar, F. J., Pf örtner, T. K., Moor, I., De Clercq, B., Stevens, G. W., & Currie, C. (2015). Socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health 2002–2010: a time-series analysis of 34 countries participating in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study. The Lancet, 385(9982), 2088-2095.
Patton, G. C., Sawyer, S. M., Santelli, J. S., Ross, D. A., Afifi, R., Allen, N. B., & Kakuma, R. (2016). Our future: a Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing. The Lancet, 387(10036), 2423-2478.
Reisner, S. L., Vetters, R., Leclerc, M., Zaslow, S., Wolfrum, S., Shumer, D., & Mimiaga, M. J. (2015). Mental health of transgender youth in care at an adolescent urban community health center: a matched retrospective cohort study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 56(3), 274-279.
World Health Organization (2018). Adolescents: health risks and solutions. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescents-health-risks-and-solutions
