Scaling Up Digital Interventions In Adolescent Health To Adapt To Post-Pandemic Environment

Due to increased connectivity and the uptake of digital devices, the lives of adolescents and youth have become increasingly intertwined with technology. Digital interventions like m-health, social media posts, wearable digital devices, and video games provided through in-built mobile applications are among the technological advancements that are taking the place of physical health services or spaces to help address health problems and challenges. Research has attested to the effectiveness of using digital technology in Low-and-Middle Income Countries (LMIC), where health systems are not capacitated or developed to ensure last-mile delivery of services.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic has considerably disrupted the health service delivery. Home-visits by community health workers are restricted. Health systems have been exclusively dedicating to pandemic management. And young people, especially in the age group of 10-19 years, face even more barriers to professional care and health-seeking than in pre-pandemic times. Even though digital technology had been deployed previously to afford a wider outreach for medical services like counselling or referral, the arrival of pandemic has necessitated the transition to digital technology for many organisations, which had hitherto intervened directly with communities, not just in the domain of health care, but across the wide spectrum of areas of social development like education, skill development, and livelihood.

In order to comply with the World Health Organization's timely strategic call to "reinforce or establish web-based and other telemedicine platforms to provide direct clinical services and provide clinical decision support’" apex health care bodies in many countries have revised or updates their policies and regulations to encourage more health care providers to use digital interventions to support people needing health care. Recognizing the ‘marginalized’ status of adolescent boys and girls in under-resourced communities, Civil Society Organisations in India have used different means to connect with adolescents to ensure sustainability in healthcare-seeking behavior and to ensure that decades of progress in improving adolescent health indicators are not squandered to emerging post-pandemic realities.

As civil society, it is important to explore the different ways in which digital technology has been adapted to enable scale-up of interventions with adolescents. The objective of the learning circle (LC) is to enable intra-civil society conversations around revising existing strategies and policies of working with adolescents, while adjusting and altering interventions to suit the needs of the post-pandemic environment. The LC will also provide a platform to CSOs to share their learnings, strategies, and plans to engage with health systems related to adolescents in the coming years. The discussions will enable co-creation of a sustainable roadmap for civil society organisations, either working or intend to work with adolescents.

The following questions will be explored as part of the learning circle:

• How has your organisation leveraged digital tools and technology to support adolescent health and well-being during the pandemic?
• What were the challenges you experienced while integrating technology into your programmes?