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Adolescence and the Social Determinants of Health

(July 2014) In 2012, the Lancet published a special issue on adolescent health to address some of these gaps and to call for greater attention and commitment to adolescent health. Together, the articles in this issue offer a cohesive approach to understanding and improving adolescent health within the larger context of global health.

To help expand the reach of this series, the Population Reference Bureau has developed three fact sheets outlining the key messages and information from selected articles.
Fact Sheet 2, Adolescence and the Social Determinants of Health, describes some of the key influences on adolescent health and health-related behaviors. Understanding the ways in which social determinants of health affect young people is critical to understanding and reducing illness and death in that population. This fact sheet provides an overview of the most significant structural and proximal determinants of health for adolescents, as detailed by Russell Viner and colleagues, and the implications for policy and practice.


Reshma Naik, a senior policy analyst in International Programs at PRB, prepared this fact sheet.