Young People’s Health: Filling in the Blanks

This is a joint post with Miriam Temin.When the Lancet published “Global patterns of mortality in young people: a systematic analysis of population health data” by George Patton et al., it brought into the public domain new data to tell an important story: adolescent boys and girls are at risk during this transitional life phase, and those risks have major implications for the health and well-being of this and the next generation.The article highlights just how much boys’ and girls’ lives diverge with adolescence and how gender fundamentally affects health. Traffic accidents cause 14 percent of deaths among males 10-24 years old deaths but only 5 percent of female deaths; violence causes 12 percent of male deaths but doesn’t even feature in the “top ten” for females. For girls and young women, the major causes of death are maternal factors, at 15 percent.The study improves upon earlier research that did not break down data by age and sex, but we’re still a long way from having a full picture of the health of teens. Because the focus is on causes of death – a relatively rare event in adolescent populations – it offers only incomplete and indirect evidence about the full burden of disease, which includes sickness and disability as well as fatalities. For adolescents, perhaps even more than for the infants and children, what matters most is found in the day-to-day assaults on wellbeing, rather than deaths.We’re talking about the non-fatal diseases that affect adolescents, often with serious current and long term consequences. For girls, anemia, human papilloma virus, and other untreated sexually transmitted infections precede a cascade of health problems at older ages and among their future children. Girls and women pass health problems on to their children, an unfortunate legacy exacerbated when girls become mothers before age 18 – a common situation in many developing countries. Unhealthy girls make for continuing cycles of ill health and gender inequality.We’re also talking about the life-long health behaviors established in the teenage years (and even earlier). Patterns of eating, physical activity, sexual behavior, tobacco and drug use among today’s adolescents underlie a large part of WHO’s prediction that non-communicable health problems will cause more than three-quarters of all deaths in 2030.It’s an adolescent world out there and without more focused attention on young people, spirals of ill health, poverty, and gender discrimination will persist. As noted in the Lancet, many of the health problems of adolescent girls, and indeed boys, are preventable; proven solutions are available. The opportunity to do something grand with a new agenda for global health is at our fingertips: start with a girl and the rest will follow.