A/HRC/32/32 health, mental health, palliative care, unintentional and intentional injuries, violence, and health-compromising behaviours that may begin during adolescence. 28. Rather than only setting up separate interventions and facilities for adolescents, efforts should be made to ensure that adolescents receive adequate attention in all policies, strategies and programmes that are relevant to them. Health systems should be designed and services should be delivered in a way that respects the right to health and other related rights of adolescents, in accordance with their evolving capacities. This can only be achieved by guaranteeing the right of adolescents to be heard and to contribute to the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of services. 29. The right to health gives rise to an obligation of States to ensure the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health services, goods and facilities. States must ensure that sufficient health facilities, goods, services and programmes are available to meet the needs of adolescents, especially the most marginalized. 30. Services, goods and facilities must be accessible to all adolescents without discrimination on any grounds. This includes access to information on their health, as well on the nature, availability, location, costs and timing of services. Services must be physically accessible, including to adolescents in remote or rural communities and adolescents with disabilities, and be located in spaces that provide adolescents with confidence that their specific health-care needs will be met. 31. Services and goods must be affordable, considering that adolescents rarely have financial means or autonomy, and accessible, directly and without parental support. In practice, it should be recalled that user fees can obstruct access to services. 32. States should develop a core package of interventions for adolescents, including to sexual and reproductive health services, that are available free of charge. Services must be designed and delivered in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities, developmental needs and the best interests of adolescents. They must respect adolescents’ right to privacy and confidentiality, address different cultural needs and expectations and comply with ethical standards. Services must be sensitive to gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex status, they must be non-judgemental regarding adolescents’ personal characteristics, lifestyle choices or life circumstances and they must treat all adolescents with dignity and respect, consistent with their status as rights holders. 33. All health-related services must be appropriate and of good quality, with skilled personnel who have been adequately trained, in particular on adolescents’ right to health. Equipment and drugs must be appropriate for adolescents and regular assessments of the quality of health-care services undertaken. 34. The health sector should take the lead in development plans for adolescents’ right to health. However, intersectoral collaboration is vital, including among the education and social protection sectors, and right-to-health considerations must be integrated into relevant policies and strategies. C. Underlying and social determinants of health 35. The right to health is not only a right to health care, but a right to underlying and social determinants of health. Social determinants are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age that influence their health. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the strongest determinants of adolescent health worldwide are structural factors 8

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents