WHO recommended policy measures that promote or protect adolescents’ health

Reproductive health

• Prohibit the marriage of girls before 18 years of age
• Punish perpetrators of coerced sex involving adolescent girls, enforce these laws and policies in a way that empowers victims and their families, and monitor their enforcement
• Eliminate financial barriers to contraceptive use by marginalized populations including adolescents and the poor, and make contraceptives affordable to all.
• Improve access to comprehensive contraceptive information and services for users and potential users with difficulties in accessing services (e.g. rural residents, urban poor, adolescents)
• Provide sexual and reproductive health services, including contraceptive information and services, for adolescents without mandatory parental and guardian authorization/notification, in order to meet the educational and service needs of adolescents
• Ensure that laws and policies enable adolescents to obtain safe abortion services
• Ensuring comprehensive legal grounds for abortion:
  • In cases where the continued pregnancy endangers the health of women, including adolescents
  • In cases of rape and incest
  • Amend laws that criminalize medical procedures, including abortion, needed only by women and/or that punish women who undergo those procedures
  • Prevent unsafe abortion, including by amending restrictive laws that threaten women’s including adolescent’s lives
  • Every woman who is legally eligible has ready access to good-quality abortion services
  • Remove third-party authorization requirements that interfere with women’s and adolescents’ right to make decisions about reproduction and to exercise control over their bodies

Mental health

• Develop and implement comprehensive national strategies for the prevention of suicide, with special attention to groups identified as at increased risk of suicide (youth identified as one of these groups)

Road injuries

• Drink-driving policies
• Graduated licensing for novice drivers graduated with zero-tolerance for drink-driving
• Set drink-driving laws that are based on blood alcohol concentration levels (or equivalent breath alcohol concentration levels). BAC limits should be =< 0.05g/dl for the general population, while lower levels (=<0.02g/dl are recommended for young/novice drivers)

Risk factors for non-communicable diseases Tobacco

• Prohibit sales to minors
• Raise taxes on tobacco
• Total elimination of smoking and tobacco smoke in a particular space or environment in order to create a 100% smoke free environment (indoor workplaces, indoor public places, public transport, and other public places).

Alcohol

• Establish an appropriate minimum age for purchase or consumption of alcoholic beverages and other policies in order to raise barriers against sales to, and consumption of alcoholic beverages by, adolescents.
• Considering the introduction of mechanisms for placing liability on sellers and servers in accordance with national legislations to prevent sales to intoxicated persons and those below the legal age
• Regulation of promotion of alcohol beverages in connection with activities targeting young people

Physical activity

• Ensure that school policies support the provision of opportunities and programmes for physical activity
• Marketing of foods and non-alcoholic beverages
• Member States should consider the most effective approach to reduce marketing to children of foods high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, free sugars, or salt. Any approach selected should be set within a framework developed to achieve the policy objective