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Poor sexual and reproductive health outcomes among adolescents aged 10-19 years are indicative of the barriers this group faces in accessing health services and highlights a gap in the availability of appropriate services, including adolescent-friendly contraceptive services (AFCS). The HIV Investment Framework identifies contraceptive services as an entry point for HIV counseling, testing, and treatment, and as a component of HIV prevention. To effectively meet the needs of adolescents, greater understanding of effective scale-up strategies for adolescent-friendly services is needed.The authors conducted a retrospective analysis of AFCS scale-up experiences in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Vietnam using the ExpandNet/World Health Organization framework for systematic scale-up. The authors analyzed the type of scale (expansion or institutionalization), dissemination and advocacy, organizational process, costs and resource mobilization, and monitoring and evaluation.The analysis showed that all programs simultaneously pursued expansion and institutionalization, contributing to sustainable scale-up. Advocacy complemented by intensive capacity building at all levels of the health system contributed to adoption of AFCS in national and district work plans and budgets as well strengthening collection of age-disaggregated data.To achieve scale-up of AFCS, the authors identified the importance of institutionalization and expansion in tandem for synergy and reinforcement, empowering adolescents to be agents of change and hold government accountable to its commitments, and strengthening health systems to sustain AFCS.This article contributes to a growing body of evidence around scale-up of AFCS, which can inform the implementation and sustainable scale-up of HIV and other services for adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial numbers of adolescents experience the negative health consequences of early, unprotected sexual activity - unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortions, pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity and Sexually Transmitted Infections including Human Immunodeficiency Virus; as well as its social and economic costs. Improving access to and use of contraceptives - including condoms - needs to be a key component of an overall strategy to preventing these problems. This paper contains a review of research evidence and programmatic experiences on needs, barriers, and approaches to access and use of contraception by adolescents in low and middle income countries (LMIC). Although the sexual activity of adolescents (ages 10-19) varies markedly for boys versus girls and by region, a significant number of adolescents are sexually active; and this increases steadily from mid-to-late adolescence. Sexually active adolescents - both married and unmarried - need contraception. All adolescents in LMIC - especially unmarried ones - face a number of barriers in obtaining contraception and in using them correctly and consistently. Effective interventions to improve access and use of contraception include enacting and implementing laws and policies requiring the provision of sexuality education and contraceptive services for adolescents; building community support for the provision of contraception to adolescents, providing sexuality education within and outside school settings, and increasing the access to and use of contraception by making health services adolescent-friendly, integrating contraceptive services with other health services, and providing contraception through a variety of outlets. Emerging data suggest mobile phones and social media are promising means of increasing contraceptive use among adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]