Making health services adolescent friendly: developing national quality standards for adolescent-friendly health services

Making Health Services Adolescent Friendly: Developing National Quality Standards is intended to be a companion to the Quality Assessment Guidebook: A guide to assessing health services for adolescent clients (ISBN 9789241598859), which was published by WHO in 2009. These two guidebooks are part of a set of tools to standardise and scale up the coverage of quality health services to adolescents, described in the WHO publication: Strengthening the health sector’s response to adolescent health and development. It sets out the public health rationale for making it easier for adolescents to obtain the health services that they need to protect and improve their health and well-being, including sexual and reproductive health services. It defines ‘adolescent-friendly health services’ from the perspective of quality, and provides step-by-step guidance on developing quality standards for health service provision to adolescents. Drawing upon international experience, it is also tailored to national epidemiological, social, cultural and economic realities, and provides guidance on identifying what actions need to be taken to assess whether appropriate standards have been achieved. Making Health Services Adolescent Friendly is intended for national public health programme managers, and individuals in organisations supporting their work. Its focus is on managers working in the government sector, but it will be equally relevant to those working in the non governmental sector and the commercial sector.