Protecting the next generation: promising directions for a better future.

world’s nearly 1 billion young people from being infected with HIV in the first place represents the only realistic way to curb the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To meet this challenge, many committed and well-meaning policymakers and other professionals have designed policies and programs to help adolescents protect their sexual and reproductive health. Yet, in doing so, we have rarely listened to young people themselves. Five years ago, the Guttmacher Institute and nine partner organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa embarked on Protecting the Next Generation, an ambitious project to gather data on young Africans and their sexual and reproductive health by asking the teens themselves about their needs and experiences. Nearly 20,000 adolescents in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Malawi and Uganda described their lives, their worries, their sources of information about pregnancy and HIV prevention, and how they access health care services. 2