Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health in Uganda

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 Uganda 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 concerned with sexual and reproductive health in Uganda.

The issues reviewed are sexual behavior, marriage and childbearing, sexual coercion, abortion, contraceptive use (with particular attention paid to condom use), knowledge related to HIV/AIDS and other STIs, sexual attitudes, protective practices, and health information and services.

The specific objectives are:

• to synthesise key findings from previous studies on adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Uganda;
• to identify information gaps in order to inform the development of future research in this area; and
• to highlight priority areas for programmes and policies aimed at improving the sexual and reproductive health of youth.

The authors state that in Uganda, adolescents are confronted with lifethreatening health risks related to unwanted pregnancies, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Adolescence is a life period of experimentation and frequent risk taking. Key factors for adolescent vulnerability to sexual and reproductive health problems include: lack of awareness and lack of correct information about the risks of unwanted pregnancies and STIs, peer and other social pressures, lack of skills needed to resist such pressures and to practice safe behavior, lack of youth-friendly sexual health and counselling services, poverty, traditional cultural norms that give young women a low social position, and little power to resist persuasion or coercion into unwanted sex.

Topics include:

• National conditions shaping adolescents’ sexual and reproductive behaviors
• National laws and policies
• Adolescent sexual and reproductive experiences
• Adolescent knowledge, attitudes and experiences with HIV/AIDs and other STIs
• Sources of information and health services