AstraZeneca's Young Health Programme Supports IAAH
We are excited to announce that IAAH has received generous funding from AstraZeneca’s Young Health Programme (YHP) for the next 3 years. In line with our vision of enhancing individual competencies, national capacities, and global investments in adolescent health, this funding will enable us to develop a more strategic agenda of activities aimed at improving the health, development and wellbeing of adolescents and young adults around the world.
The field of adolescent health is relatively new and small, even in high income countries which have the longest history of a professional adolescent health and medicine workforce. There is a growing need for a trained workforce in every country, especially in countries where success in reducing infant mortality has led to an extremely large cohort of adolescents. In this regard there is a skill mismatch; countries with the highest population of adolescents (e.g., in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia) have the least access to expertise in adolescent health. What this means is that the workforce in many countries, especially those with a large population proportion of adolescents, does not have the necessary skills to advance adolescent health. This includes the clinical, research, advocacy and public policy workforce in fields as diverse as public health, clinical medicine and nursing, sociology, psychology, public policy, welfare and education.
IAAH is a small professional association with a large vision. We are quietly pleased that the investments that we have made over the past few years in developing our strategic and communications infrastructure are increasingly reflected in recognition of IAAH as a valuable organization in the field. The timing for this philanthropic donation is particularly important. Five years ago, global momentum really started to grow around the importance of adolescent health. Yet this momentum is at risk of being undermined by the current pandemic. Adolescents have been less directly at risk of COVID-19 than older populations, but the shadow pandemic has arguably hit adolescents harder than any other age group. Without appropriate investments, the indirect effects of the pandemic that accrue from interrupted education, poor mental health and too early pregnancy risk playing out across adolescents’ future lives.
Over the next 3 years, this new funding will support the IAAH Young Professionals Network to run a bimonthly webinar series, extend our developing educational and policy initiatives, enable us to build deeper partnerships with key organizations (eg WHO, Family Planning 2020), support wider initiatives (eg International Adolescent Health Week) and host the 2021 World Congress in Lima, Peru (currently planned as a hybrid meeting).
We are extremely grateful for this vote of support of our work from AstraZeneca’s Young Health Programme.
About AstraZeneca’s Young Health Programme
The Young Health Programme (YHP) is a core part of AstraZeneca’s sustainability ambition to use its capabilities to make a meaningful impact where society needs it – health. The YHP is a disease prevention programme with a unique focus on young people age 10 to 24 living in vulnerable and under-resourced settings around the world. The YHP addresses the primary risk factors – tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and exposure to air pollution – that contribute to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) – cancers, diabetes, heart and respiratory diseases and mental ill-health. Launched in 2010, the YHP has reached more than five million young people in over 30 countries through advocacy, community-based programming, research and empowering young health leaders.
The Young Health Programme: Better Health Choices, Brighter Life Chances.
For more information please visit the Young Health Programme website.