Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Glob Health Sci Pract. 2023 Jun 21;11(3). doi: 10.9745/GHSP-D-22-00498.
There is a growing global interest in puberty and early adolescence and the importance of ensuring young people have the information and support they need during this critical phase of transition in the life course. This article highlights an adaptable model being used to support the development of contextually appropriate puberty education, in the form of illustrated and often bilingual books, for early adolescent girls and boys in countries around the world. This youth-centered participatory research and design model, which relies on the generation of community and government partnerships, has been employed in 10 countries thus far. Valuable learning has been documented from various contexts, including the approach's flexibility in adapting to the inputs of government and community members, incorporating local buy-in as a key ingredient for sustainability, using in-country experts for social and cultural appropriateness of illustrations and translations, and ensuring that the authentic youth voices captured through the participatory data collection and field-testing shape the educational content. The continuous integration of insights and perceptions of adults who influence young people's lives into the development process is also essential to enabling the uptake of puberty content in each new country. Parents, educators, youth service providers, and government officials are often the gatekeepers to young adolescents receiving puberty content and are thus critical to the process. This review of more than a decade of experience using this model underscores the essentiality of 2 key components-local partnership and participatory data collection-and highlights the importance of flexible approaches that are adapted to the unique sociocultural and environmental conditions in each country context.
全球对青春期和青少年早期越来越关注，确保年轻人在生命历程的这个关键过渡阶段获得所需的信息和支持至关重要。本文重点介绍了一种适应性模型，该模型以插图形式，通常是双语书籍的形式，为世界各地的青少年女孩和男孩提供了具有文化背景的青春期教育。这种以青年为中心的参与式研究和设计模型依赖于社区和政府伙伴关系的建立，迄今为止已在 10 个国家使用。从各种背景中都记录到了有价值的学习经验，包括该方法在适应政府和社区成员的投入方面的灵活性、将当地的支持作为可持续性的关键因素纳入、利用国内专家确保插图和翻译的社会文化适宜性、以及确保通过参与式数据收集和实地测试所获得的真实青年声音来塑造教育内容。将影响年轻人生活的成年人的见解和看法不断纳入发展过程中，对于在每个新国家推广青春期内容也是至关重要的。父母、教育工作者、青年服务提供者和政府官员通常是青少年接受青春期内容的把关人，因此他们是这一过程的关键。本文回顾了十多年来使用该模型的经验，强调了两个关键组成部分（本地伙伴关系和参与式数据收集）的重要性，并强调了适应每个国家独特的社会文化和环境条件的灵活方法的重要性。
