The state of adolescent menstrual health in low- and middle-income countries and suggestions for future action and research

Abstract

In recognition of the opportunity created by the increasing attention to menstrual health at global, regional, and national levels, the World Health Organization’s Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research and the UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction convened a global research collaborative meeting on menstrual health in adolescents in August 2018. Experts considered nine domains of menstrual health (awareness and understanding; stigma, norms, and socio-cultural practices; menstrual products; water and sanitation; disposal; empathy and support; clinical care; integration with other programmes; and financing) and answered the following five questions: (1) What is the current situation? (2) What are the factors contributing to this situation? (3) What should the status of this domain of adolescent menstrual health be in 10 years? (4) What actions are needed to achieve these goals? (5) What research is needed to achieve these goals? This commentary summarizes the consensus reached in relation to these questions during the expert consultation. In doing so, it describes the state of adolescent menstrual health in low- and middle-income countries and sets out suggestions for action and research that could contribute to meeting the holistic menstrual health needs of adolescent girls and others who menstruate worldwide.

Contributors

Marina Plesons:

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3224-618X

[e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Reprod Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Reprod Health

Title: Reproductive Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1742-4755

Publication date (Electronic): 8 February 2021

Publication date PMC-release: 8 February 2021

Publication date Collection: 2021

Volume: 18

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.3575.4, ISNI 0000000121633745, UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, , World Health Organization, ; Geneva, Switzerland

[2 ]GRID grid.420315.1, ISNI 0000 0001 1012 1269, Gender, Human Rights and Community Engagement Department, , UNAIDS, ; Geneva, Switzerland

[3 ]Regional Bureau for Education for the Asia-Pacific, UNESCO, Bangkok, Thailand

[4 ]GRID grid.466905.8, Health Promotion Bureau, , Ministry of Health, ; Colombo, Sri Lanka

[5 ]Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, London, UK

[6 ]GRID grid.189967.8, ISNI 0000 0001 0941 6502, Hubert Department of Global Health, Rollins School of Public Health, , Emory University, ; Atlanta, USA

[7 ]Save the Children El Salvador, San Salvador, El Salvador

[8 ]United Nations Population Fund, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

[9 ]Save the Children USA, Washington, DC USA

[10 ]WoMena Knowledge Management Team, WoMena Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark

[11 ]GRID grid.413355.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2221 4219, African Population and Health Research Center, ; Nairobi, Kenya

[12 ]GRID grid.11194.3c, ISNI 0000 0004 0620 0548, African Centre for Systematic Review and Knowledge Translation, , College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, ; Kampala, Uganda

[13 ]GRID grid.48004.38, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9764, Department of Clinical Sciences, , Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, ; Liverpool, UK

[14 ]GRID grid.29857.31, ISNI 0000 0001 2097 4281, Department of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine, , Pennsylvania State University, ; State College, USA

[15 ]GRID grid.21729.3f, ISNI 0000000419368729, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, , Mailman School of Public Health, ; New York, USA

Article

Publisher ID: 1082

DOI: 10.1186/s12978-021-01082-2

PMC ID: 7869499

SO-VID: 318e865f-d970-442b-a24b-7efadb0ae131

Copyright statement: © The Author(s) 2021

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Categories

Subject: Commentary

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2021