How can we better serve adolescent key populations? Strategies to encourage and inform future data collection, analysis, and use^†

† The information in this document expresses the author’s personal views and opinions and does not necessarily represent UNICEF’s position.

ABSTRACT

Young key populations (ages 10–24) (YKPs) are uniquely vulnerable to HIV infection. Yet they are often underserved, due in part to a limited understanding of their needs. Many successful approaches to understanding YKPs exist but are not widely used. To identify the most useful approaches and encourage their uptake, we reviewed strategic information on YKPs and experiences collecting, analysing, and utilising it from countries in Africa, Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. As a result, we recommend one central guiding principle – any effort to understand and serve YKPs should include a specific focus on adolescent key populations (AKPs) (ages 10–19) – and three strategies to inform data collection, analysis, and use: tailor recruitment practices to ensure young people’s representation, select indicators and research methods based on their ability to inform responsive programming for and give a voice to YKPs, and thoroughly disaggregate data. We demonstrate the utility of each strategy in YKP research and programmes, and in doing so note the particular importance for AKPs. We hope that this paper encourages additional research on YKPs and helps bridge the gap between research and effective programmes to serve the youngest and most vulnerable members of key populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Key populations
• young people
• adolescents
• HIV prevention
• data for decision-making

Acknowledgements

Suzanne Fischer edited this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

† The information in this document expresses the author’s personal views and opinions and does not necessarily represent UNICEF’s position.

1 Because this article focuses on young people, the term “sex worker” is used with caution. The United Nations restricts the definition of sex workers to adults 18 years of age and over and affirms that the involvement of children in transactional sex/sex work and other forms of sexual exploitation and abuse contravenes United Nations conventions and international human rights law. Thus, every reference to “sex workers” in this paper is used only as “short-hand” and should be interpreted with the full understanding and in full agreement with the above definition.

2 Ideas for overcoming some of these barriers are discussed in various guidance documents (UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office, 2013; Medrano & Tabben-Toussaint, 2012; WHO, 2013).

3 Best practices for data collection include asking about both sex assigned at birth and gender identity in order to correctly count respondents who are transgender (Deutsch et al., 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was made possible by the support of USAID under the terms of the Preventive Technologies Agreement No. GHO A 00 09 00016-00.