Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Ghana

This report is part of a larger, five-year study of adolescent sexual and reproductive health issues called Protecting the Next Generation: Understanding HIV Risk Among Youth. This report provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge on adolescent sexual and reproductive health issues in Ghana, with a focus on HIV prevention. It draws upon the existing body of social science research and includes both quantitative and qualitative studies. Its goal is to communicate key findings from existing research to a wide audience within the country.

The specific objectives are:

• to synthesise key findings from the studies that have been done on adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Ghana;
• to identify information gaps in order to inform the development of future research in this area; and
• to highlight implications and priority areas to inform programs and policies and improve the sexual and reproductive health of youth.

The core issues reviewed are sexual behavior, marriage and childbearing, sexual coercion, abortion, contraceptive use (including condom use), knowledge related to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), attitudes and protective practices among young people, and health information and services. The main sources of information for the review are the 1993 and 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys (GDHS) that included young people aged 15 and older, the 1998 Ghana National Youth Reproductive Health Survey (GYRHS) that was administered to young people aged 12–24, and various other subnational surveys. The research involves focus group discussions and qualitative interviews with adolescents, teachers and health workers as well as national surveys of adolescents.

Topics include:

• Adolescent sexual and reproductive experience
• Adolescent knowledge, attitudes and experiences with HIV/AIDS and other STIs
• Information sources for adolescent sexual and reproductive health
• Special groups at risk
• Policies and programmes