Source: National Health Portal
The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has launched a health programme for adolescents, in the age group of 10-19 years, which would target their nutrition, reproductive health, and substance abuse, among other issues.
Objectives:
- Improve Nutrition
- Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health
- Enhance Mental Health
- Prevent Injuries and violence
- Prevent substance misuse
Key features
- The Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram was launched on 7th January 2014.
- The key principles of this programme are adolescent participation and leadership, Equity and inclusion, Gender Equity and strategic partnerships with other sectors and stakeholders.
- The programme envisions enabling all adolescents in India to realize their full potential by making informed and responsible decisions related to their health and well being and by accessing the services and support they need to do so.
- To guide the implementation of this programme, MOHFW in collaboration with UNFPA has developed a National Adolescent Health Strategy. It realigns the existing clinic-based curative approach to focus on a more holistic model based on a continuum of care for adolescent health and developmental needs.
- The Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (National Adolescent Health Programme), will comprehensively address the health needs of the 243 million adolescents.
- It introduces community-based interventions through peer educators and is underpinned by collaborations with other ministries and state governments.
- The programme expands the scope of adolescent health programming in India – from being limited to sexual and reproductive health, it now includes in its ambit nutrition, injuries and violence (including gender-based violence), non-communicable diseases, mental health, and substance misuse. The strength of the program is its health promotion approach.
- It is a paradigm shift from the existing clinic-based services to promotion and prevention and reaching adolescents in their own environment, such as in schools, families, and communities.
- Key drivers of the program are community-based interventions like:
- Outreach by counselors
- Facility-based counseling
- Social and Behavior Change Communication; and
- Strengthening of Adolescent Friendly Health Clinics across levels of care.
- Adolescents often do not have the autonomy or the agency to make their own decision. RKSK takes cognizance of this and involves parents and the community. The focus is on reorganizing the existing public health system in order to meet the service needs of adolescents.
- Under this, a core package of services includes preventive, promotive, curative and counselling services, routine check-ups at primary, secondary and tertiary levels of care are provided regularly to adolescents, married and unmarried, girls and boys during the clinic sessions.
