Take Action for Girls' Health | The Coalition For Adolescent Girls

GLOBAL ACTIONS
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Implement a comprehensive health agenda for adolescent girls in at least three countries

Working with countries that demonstrate national leadership on adolescent girls, bilateral donors, the World Bank, the WHO, UNFPA, and UNICEF can comprehensively support girl-focused interventions (including girl-friendly reproductive health services),
broad health sector changes, transformations in social norms, community resources for girls, and girls’ schooling. Accompanied by operational and evaluation research and funded by domestic and international resources, the aim is to achieve full program coverage among the poorest segments of the population by 2016.

Eliminate marriage for girls younger than 18

Child marriage is a manifestation of girls’ powerlessness and a driver of health risks. International agencies should identify the practice, affecting at least half of all girls in about a dozen countries, as a human rights violation. Girls need national laws to prevent child marriage, along with donor support for national responses—for example, marriage registration systems and incentive schemes to keep daughters in school—and programs to mobilize communities and create viable alternatives to marriage.

Place adolescent girls at the center of international and national action and investment on maternal health

New advocacy and programmatic investments give renewed hope for maternal health. Within advocacy and program efforts, specific attention to girls will pay off. Donors should support research on the risk factors for pregnant adolescents and evaluations of programming for girls facing high hurdles to health care. They should translate evidence into programming to reduce adolescent maternal mortality beyond labor and delivery to also include family planning, nutrition, and abortion-related care. Funding should be earmarked for adolescents within any new resource package for maternal health.

Focus HIV prevention on adolescent girls

To turn off the tap of new infections and break theback of the epidemic, HIV prevention efforts must focus more on girls and young women. As the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and other major international HIV/AIDS initiatives step up HIV prevention efforts, adolescent girls must be at the forefront. This means supporting efforts to transform harmful social norms, ensuring that essential services and commodities are in place for girls, educating girls about avoiding HIV/AIDS as part of comprehensive sexuality education, and working with boys and men to change their behavior—for themselves and their partners.

Make health–system strengthening and monitoring work for girls

If the health system is failing girls, it’s failing. Health system strengthening strategies are unfolding, funded by vertical and health sector sources and new resources. Those designing health system reforms should pay particular attention to community-based service delivery for girls, girl-friendly reproductive health services, health worker training to increase competency on adolescent girls’ and boys’ health, and financing and payment strategies that prioritize girls’ health.

Make secondary school completion a priority for adolescent girls

Getting girls through secondary school is one of the most important actions governments can take to improve girls’ chances for good health. Governments should extend the definition of basic education, to which all are entitled, to lower secondary or to age 16. Governments and the private sector, with donor support, must increase formal and non-formal school places by extending primary school facilities, offering targeted scholarships or household cash transfer schemes to disadvantaged girls, and offering open-learning programs so girls can study at their own pace.

Create an innovation fund for girls’ health

The evidence base on girls’ health, and effective strategies to improve it, is weak. Girls urgently need investments in data collection (e.g. through the Demographic and Health Surveys and longitudinal studies) and multi-country evaluations of promising programs, including the 12-year-old check-in and programs to change boys’ and men’s attitudes and behaviors. Philanthropic funders could create an innovation fund to stimulate knowledge generation and dissemination, leveraging resources from governments and official donors’ agencies along the way.

Increase donor support for adolescent girls’ health

Obtaining better health for girls requires significant— yet feasible—investment by governments, donors, and the private sector. There is no valid estimate of current spending on girls’ health. In the absence of a baseline, but knowing that girls’ health programs constitute a small share of current effort, OECD donors should increase official development assistance in areas that benefit girls by at least $1 billion per year. This constitutes approximately 6% of current spending on global health. In addition, nontraditional donors, including emerging donors in the Middle East, should identify girls’ health as a focus area and commit $1 billion per year.

As detailed in Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health, healthy adolescent girls help ensure generations of healthy communities. Implementing these actions puts this cycle in motion.

Want to know more?
Check out the action plans focused on other sectors.

Education
Voice

WHY GIRLS?
- Because they’re ready to change our world
  Learn More
Research
- Girls Count
  A global investment & action agenda
- Education
  The transformative power of educating teen girls
- Health
  Generations of healthy families start with a girl
- Voice
  Girls speak, we listen
- Maps
  The first girl-specific global maps
Action
- Big Picture
  10 actions, one global agenda
- Education
  Fulfill the promise of education for girls
- Health
  Work inside the health system and beyond
- Voice
  Give adolescent girls a bigger microphone
- ACT NOW
  Getting everyone involved
ABOUT US
- We believe that adolescent girls are the key to changing the course of global poverty. They just need a chance.
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Want to know more? Check out the action plans focused on other sectors.

Want to know more?
Check out the action plans focused on other sectors.