Nursing our global youth back to health
By Jane Gardner
Decades of neglect and chronic under-investment have damaged the health and wellbeing of those aged 10-24, making them the world’s most overlooked demographic when it comes to health.
But a new international inquiry, enlisting experts from 14 countries and headed by University of Melbourne specialists, will aim to to turn the tide and safeguard what is now the largest generation of adolescents and young adults in human history.
There are an estimated 1.8 billion people aged 10-24 in the world – a figure that will jump to two billion by 2030. Almost 90 per cent of these young people live in developing countries.
In a major announcement in London on May 10, University of Melbourne Professor George Patton will lead a special Lancet Commission, which will be tasked with identifying and investigating the shortfalls in global youth health policy.
The commission’s initial report, also released on May 10, suggests their work is cut out for them.
Adolescence is a critical time of formative growth to achieve human potential, a fascinating period of profound physical, psychological, neurological and emotional change. It is a life stage marked by vulnerability and opportunity. Yet little focus has been put on this age group.
Professor Patton says efforts to improve life for this generation will yield a triple dividend of benefits – today, into adulthood, and for the next generation of children.
Our Future: A Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing report brings together perspectives from public health, economics, political and social sciences, behavioural science and neuroscience.
It provides recommendations for action to protect and promote the health, wellbeing and potential of this important demographic.
Professor Patton is a Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Heath Research at the University of Melbourne. With him on the Lancet Commission is Professor Susan Sawyer, the Geoff and Helen Handbury Chair of Adolescent Health at the University of Melbourne.
Professor Patton says: “There is nothing more important in global health than ensuring adolescents have the resources to do this. It is crucial to invest urgently in their health, education, livelihoods and participation.
This generation of young people can transform all of our futures.
Philanthropist Melinda Gates from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says that adolescents have been forgotten.
“My children’s generation is better equipped to expand the limits of human possibility than any that has gone before. But while responsibility for their health and wellbeing lies with everyone, accountability currently rests with no one,” she says.
“For too long adolescents have been the forgotten community of the health and development agenda. We cannot afford to neglect them any longer.”
The great threats
Two in three young people on the planet grow up in countries where HIV and AIDs, early pregnancy, unsafe sex, depression, injury and violence threaten their health and wellbeing, the report shows.
Adolescents today also face new challenges: rising levels of obesity and mental health disorders, high unemployment and the risk of radicalisation.
Global health efforts have improved the health of children aged under five in the past few decades, but older children have slipped through the cracks.
A new analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reveals that AIDS, road traffic accidents and drowning account for a quarter of deaths in 10 to 14-year-olds around the world.
For the older age groups, from 15-24, road traffic accidents, self-harm and violence are the leading causes of death. And then there’s mental health.
Depression resulted in the largest amount of ill health for adolescents and young adults.
Alcohol is a huge risk factor for the 20 to 24-year-old group and sadly, maternal disorders are the leading cause of death in young women, responsible for around two in five in the same age bracket.
So the risk factors for youth to young adulthood are serious and they are many.
Professor Sawyer says the b