LEARN Lao PDR - Improving Adolescent Health

The LEARN program in Lao PDR is a program with the overall objective to contribute to better population health and Universal Health Coverage in Lao through better informed public health policies and their policies implementation, monitoring and evaluation. LEARN is funded by the European Union, managed through MCNV Laos, and supports research in the areas of nutrition, mother and child health, and sexual reproductive health. LEARN focuses on translating key messages from research and on translating that knowledge into effective evidence that is available to policy makers in Lao PDR.

The formulation of the National Health Research Agenda is aimed at ensuring that all current and future health research in Lao PDR contributes to evidence-based health policy development and implementation.

LEARN has supported the development of the Knowledge Translation Strategy, which is important in making the research more available and understandable for health policy development and implementation.

There are four senior researchers, five open-call grantees, and four PhD candidates who are undertaking their research with technical support from the Vrije University of Amsterdam.

Researchers in the Lao LEARN project completed several studies into adolescent health, one of which was a study about teenage pregnancy.  Teenage pregnancy is still very high in Laos, nearly one in five women aged between 15 and 19 already has a child, and roughly 5% have fallen pregnant before this age. Young mothers are typically women from rural areas, where teenage pregnancies are twice as high. Pregnancies at an early age are associated with an increased health risks, or even death, of both mother and child. Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death and disability among girls ages 15-19 in Lao PDR. Additionally, children born to adolescents suffer poorer health outcomes in comparison to those born to adult women. Pregnant teenagers are commonly expelled from school, which further increases their likelihood to experience poverty.

The main factor affecting high rates of teenaged pregnancy is that public family planning services are currently only for married women. Unmarried adolescents cannot access these services and there are currently only two, youth-friendly services in the country. In addition, more than half of adolescents aged 15 -19 years old have inadequate health literacy levels, and thus face difficulties in understanding information, communicating about health, and making decisions about their own reproductive and sexual life.

Researchers engaged in a series of meetings with stakeholders in adolescent health; government officials, representatives of non-governmental organisations, and with the Lao Youth Union. Conclusions were formulated and recommendations made. These recommendations were supported by the researchers who then encouraged adolescents to share their experiences in form of a video competition. The competition provided information on the adolescent’s ideas, knowledge about reproductive health, the services provided in Lao PDR, and the adolescent’s needs to maintain their safety on SRH and TP prevention.

Lao Equity through Policy Analysis and Research Networks (LEARN) is a project by the Lao Tropical and Public Health Institute (LaoTPHI, formerly National Institute of Public Health), the University of Health Sciences, Faculty of Public Health, MCNV-Laos, University of Public Health, Hanoi, Free University, the Netherlands.