“Essential to Prosperity and Opportunity”: Heather Boonstra on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

Summary: “If girls and young women are often thought of as the forgotten drivers of development, their sexual and reproductive health is almost entirely absent,” says the Guttmacher Institute’s Heather Boonstra in this week’s podcast. Speaking at the launch of the latest State of the World Population report, which focuses on improving health care for adolescent girls, Boonstra highlights three actionable recommendations from the report: promoting the right to age-appropriate, comprehensive sexuality education; reaching girls 10 to 14 years old; and investing in appropriate services for young people. The UNFPA report is welcome, Boonstra says. The Guttmacher Institute found in a recent door-to-door survey in sub-Saharan Africa that myths about sex, such as “you can’t get pregnant the first time,” were very prevalent. “A lot of adolescents wanted more information, but they really wanted [it] from trusted sources…from teachers and from health care providers,” she says. “They were less interested in getting information from their family or friends.” Boonstra recommends that policymakers address common barriers to youth-friendly health services, such as distance from clinics, fear of stigma, and the perception that services are expensive, and focus on what is important to adolescents, like privacy, confidentiality, education, and relationships. “To be most effective, we really need to reach young people before they begin having sex,” she says, which means getting age-appropriate, mandatory sexual education in the primary school programming. “In many parts of the world adolescents and particularly young women never make it past the primary school years.” “We know that there’s a really direct line between sexual and reproductive health, and being able to be empowered there, and a young woman’s ability to lead a productive life,” Boonstra says. “Therefore investing in this area…is really essential to prosperity and opportunity, whether you’re talking about the young woman, or you’re talking about families and communities, or the national government.”  Boonstra spoke at the Wilson Center on October 30 for the launch of UNFPA’s State of the World Population 2013. Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes.