Student’s awareness session on Good practices that can be integrated in adolescence & ensures better health outcome in adult years

Student’s awareness session on Good practices that can be integrated in adolescence & ensures better health outcome in adult years

ADOLOSCENCE: An age of opportunity – Globally, there are around 1.2 billion adolescents in the age group of 10-19 years. Since the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals, global efforts are looking to address hunger and poverty, improving access to health, education, women’s empowerment and environment. The present generations of adolescents are growing up in this combined age of opportunities and challenges.

An age of vulnerability — Adolescence is a time when influences outside the family assume greater significance. They find themselves facing newer opportunities and challenges, and are often susceptible to high risk behaviours.
The rationale to invest in adolescents are fivefold.
1. Right of an adolescent: The Convention on the Rights of the Child (includes 80% adolescents), and the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against women (includes adolescent girls) mandates special focus on adolescents.
2. Consolidation of global efforts and investments: It will consolidate the historic global gains achieved through: i) reduction in under-five mortality rate, ii) near elimination of gender gaps in primary school enrollment, iii) improved access to safe water and critical medicines. Meanwhile, the daunting challenges are retention of children in secondary school, one-third of all new HIV cases involving young people (15-24 years); 1 in 3 girls getting married before 18 years in developing countries
3. Intergenerational transmission of poverty and vulnerabilities: Extremely vulnerable stage of life- poorest adolescent girls are at risk of early marriage, premature childbearing, high rate of maternal mortality, increased child under nutrition and related development disorders.
4. Inheritors of the current social, environmental and economic turmoil (including structural unemployment), climate change and environmental degradation, explosive urbanization, migration, ageing societies, rising cost of healthcare and other humanitarian crisis.
5. Deserve protection and care, and their voices to be heard.

Goals of this session:
• Presenting in a community setting the importance of ‘ adolescence’ in child development
• Good practices that can be integrated in adolescence & ensures better health outcome in adult years
• Sharing the importance of physical activity, health & nutrition in promoting adolescent health

Profile of the Speaker:

Dr.Lakshmi Shanti is a Senior Paediatrician and an active member of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP), Coimbatore chapter. She has been instrumental in conducting many innovative programmes to ensure better child health, led Adolescent health outreach along with the IAP & ICPH teams in schools and community setting. She currently serves as a Medical Officer in the Coimbatore Municipal Corporation. She has been the President and Secretary of the adolescent health academy.

Dr.Lakshmi Shanti is a close associate of the International Center for Child & Public Health and has served as faculty on training programmes for adolescent boys and girls, awareness sessions for rural parents and technical presentations in our pioneering early childhood development interventions. Her expertise as a Pediatrician is also greatly appreciated in our adolescent health outreach in the service villages of Shanti Ashram.
She is a Graduate from the Coimbatore Medical College and completed her PG Diploma in Adolescent Pediatrics from Kerala University.

Programme