The Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing was established in 2013 and was a partnership of 30 of the world’s leading experts (those working in academic and technical institutions, and those at the policy/ implementation coalface) from 14 countries and two youth health advocates. Auspiced by The Lancetand led by four academic institutions: The University of Melbourne; University College London; London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Columbia University.
Academic Partner Institutions
We have developed a partnership with the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) to support the development of better health metrics for adolescents.
We thank the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) who have conducted a global survey of youth advocates around their perception of major youth health needs in their countries.
The Public Health Foundation of India is undertaking a review of the health effects of the new social networking and digital media environment on young people. This includes consideration of potential harms and opportunities for health gain.
With economic development, families are changing rapidly. In this changing environment, the American University of Beirut is considering the scope for adolescent health promotion within families.
Funders
We would like to thank our funders who have provided financial support, making this Commission possible.
MBBS MD FRACP
Susan Sawyer holds the inaugural Chair of Adolescent Health at the University of Melbourne. She is the Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Australia’s leading academic centre of excellence in adolescent health. A paediatrician by training, Professor Sawyer has helped establish the field of Adolescent Health and Medicine in Australia. Her clinical and research interests have largely focused on models of ‘adolescent friendly’ health care for young people. She is the current chairwoman of WHO’s Technical Steering Committee on Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health. She is Vice-President of the International Association of Adolescent Health.
MA, MSc, BMBCh (Oxford Univ, UK), PhD (London Univ, UK)
David Ross is a Professor of Epidemiology and International Public Health in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He is the leader of the Health of Adolescents and Young People Theme within the LSHTM’s MARCH (Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health) Centre, and is a member of the Technical Steering Committee of WHO’s Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health Department. His main current research and teaching relate to low and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the prevention and treatment of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, adolescent health, and intervention study methods. With colleagues in WHO, he coordinates a two-week course on adolescent health in LMICs in LSHTM each June.
George Patton is Professorial Fellow in Adolescent Health Research at the University of Melbourne. He is also a Senior Principal Research Fellow with the Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council. He has a research background in epidemiology and a clinical background in psychiatry. His research covers both clinical and community settings. The studies have included long-term and inter-generational cohorts, large scale surveys and interventions studies. He played a leading role around two series on adolescent health for the Lancet. These presented some of the first and most comprehensive global overviews of health and development in young people. He has had advisory roles with the UN, World Health Organization, the World Bank and UNICEF.
MD, MPH John Santelli, MD, MPH, is an adolescent medicine physician, Professor and Chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University, and a Senior Fellow at The Guttmacher Institute. Dr. Santelli has conducted research and led programs to understand risk for unintended pregnancy, HIV and other STIs, to improve adolescent access to clinical and community preventive services, to connect underserved populations with healthcare, to measure the impact of adolescent health services on clinical and public health outcomes, and to promote the ethical conduct of research with adolescents. His 25+ year career in public health has included tenures at the Baltimore City Health Department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Columbia University. At Columbia, Santelli leads an academic department that conducts a broad variety of community and clinic-based interventions, in the US and globally. He is currently the principal investigator of two NICHD funded projects on HIV risk among youth and linkages between HIV infection and reproductive health with the Rakai Health Sciences Project in southern Uganda. The Youth project is using existing Rakai Community Cohort Survey data to examine longitudinal predictors of HIV acquisition and new qualitative data to understand adolescent developmental transitions and HIV risk. The HIV and Linkages project is examining couple related decision making about HIV risk reduction and reproduction among seroconcordant and serodiscordant couples. Santelli is also the PI on an AHRQ-funded project to increase health care provider awareness of adolescent clinical preventive services using new media. He has been a national leader in insuring that adolescents have access to medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education.
Russell Viner is Professor of Adolescent Health at the UCL Institute of Child Health, and active in research, health policy and clinical medicine.
Research interests are in health services, burden of disease, health policy for young people, as well as obesity, diabetes and chronic condition management in adolescents. He also an active clinical paediatrician, working across the fields of clinical medicine (diabetes, obesity and adolescent general medicine) and health policy.
As Clinical Director of the London Strategic Clinical Network for Children for NHS England, he is responsible for leading healthcare for London’s 2 million children and young people.
He leads the Adolescent Workstream of the DH Policy Research Unit in Children, Young People and Families (CPRU), holds a programme grant from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and is named on >£11 million in current research grants.