“Adolescents and young people are uniquely positioned to be effective advocates to hold their governments accountable for the delivery of promises, policies and programs that affect their lives. Now, more than any other time, young people have the opportunity to take action to advocate for adolescent health and well-being!”

The purpose of this toolkit is to guide the design, implementation, and monitoring of an effective national advocacy action roadmap to bring about positive policy-specific changes to improve the health and well-being of adolescents. As explained in the toolkit, “Adolescents are a diverse group of people, all experiencing numerous life changes - physical, mental and social - that will affect their health and well-being for the rest of their lives. For this reason, strategic investments in adolescents’ health and well-being are critical interventions that can have a major impact. Such investments can: have economic and social benefits amounting to 10 times more than they cost, save 12.5 million lives, prevent more than 30 million unwanted pregnancies, and prevent widespread disability. Yet, despite compelling evidence of these benefits, adolescent health and well-being remains neglected in most countries, and, as a result, adolescence remains a life period when many face great risks.” The toolkit was therefore developed to offer information and tools for young people to advocate effectively, and to hold their governments accountable, for adolescent health and well-being in their countries.

Although toolkit was developed by young people, for young people, to be used by networks of youth-led and youth-serving organisations, the toolkit may also be useful for others, including civil society groups, government departments, and everyone concerned with adolescent health and well-being.

Each of this toolkit's five chapters includes examples and exercises that are designed to assist young people and their networks to influence their country’s national health planning processes, and includes the following five chapters:

Chapter 1. Getting ready for action: understanding adolescent health and well-being
This chapter offers:

• A greater understanding of adolescents’ health issues globally, and of their rights;
• A better appreciation of the barriers that prevent adolescents from achieving health and well-being; and
• More awareness of how important youth advocacy and accountability are for realising adolescent health and well-being.

Chapter 2. Gathering information on national policies, strategies and plans
This chapter offers:

• A greater recognition of the differences between national policies, strategies, and plans and what they aim to achieve;
• A greater understanding of the policy planning process; and
• A better appreciation of what a good adolescent health and well-being policy entails.

Chapter 3. Using global commitments to improve adolescent health and well-being
This chapter offers:

• A better understanding of how a country makes policy commitments to adolescent health and well-being at the regional and global levels; and
• A better understanding of how to use global commitments to strengthen advocacy in a country and drive accountability to ensure the government makes progress in line with global standards.

Chapter 4. Developing an effective advocacy action roadmap
This chapter offers:

• Guidance on how to clearly define an advocacy action roadmap’s goal and objectives, target audiences, and activities; and
• A greater ability to implement one's own advocacy roadmap for adolescent health and well-being.

Chapter 5: Review, monitor and act for better results
This chapter offers:

• A clearer understanding of how one can review and adjust on advocacy action roadmap to make it more effective; and
• A greater appreciation of the importance of ongoing monitoring in tracking progress for adolescent health and well-being in a country.

This toolkit is a joint initiative made possible by a collaboration between the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health and Women Deliver, with the support of several partners and contributors.