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Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa

BACKGROUND: Youth-friendly health services are a key strategy for improving young people’s health. This is the first study investigating provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme in South Africa since the national Department of Health took over its management in 2006. In a rural area of Sou...

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Autores principales: Geary, Rebecca Sally, Gómez-Olivé, Francesc Xavier, Kahn, Kathleen, Tollman, Stephen, Norris, Shane Anthony
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067688/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24934095
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-259
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author Geary, Rebecca Sally
Gómez-Olivé, Francesc Xavier
Kahn, Kathleen
Tollman, Stephen
Norris, Shane Anthony
author_facet Geary, Rebecca Sally
Gómez-Olivé, Francesc Xavier
Kahn, Kathleen
Tollman, Stephen
Norris, Shane Anthony
author_sort Geary, Rebecca Sally
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Youth-friendly health services are a key strategy for improving young people’s health. This is the first study investigating provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme in South Africa since the national Department of Health took over its management in 2006. In a rural area of South Africa, we aimed to describe the characteristics of the publicly-funded primary healthcare facilities, investigate the proportion of facilities that provided the Youth Friendly Services programme and examine healthcare workers’ perceived barriers to and facilitators of the provision of youth-friendly health services. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses of all eight publicly-funded primary healthcare facilities in Agincourt sub-district, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts was conducted and data saturation was reached. RESULTS: Participants largely felt that the Youth Friendly Services programme was not implemented in their primary healthcare facilities, with the exception of one clinic. Barriers to provision reported by nurses were: lack of youth-friendly training among staff and lack of a dedicated space for young people. Four of the eight facilities did not appear to uphold the right of young people aged 12 years and older to access healthcare independently. Breaches in young people’s confidentiality to parents were reported. CONCLUSIONS: Participants reported that provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme is limited in this sub-district, and below the Department of Health’s target that 70% of primary healthcare facilities should provide these services. Whilst a dedicated space for young people is unlikely to be feasible or necessary, all facilities have the potential to be youth-friendly in terms of staff attitudes and actions. Training and on-going support should be provided to facilitate this; the importance of such training is emphasised by staff. More than one member of staff per facility should be trained to allow for staff turnover. As one of a few countrywide, government-run youth-friendly clinic programmes in a low or middle-income country, these results may be of interest to programme managers and policy makers in such settings.
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spelling pubmed-40676882014-06-25 Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa Geary, Rebecca Sally Gómez-Olivé, Francesc Xavier Kahn, Kathleen Tollman, Stephen Norris, Shane Anthony BMC Health Serv Res Research Article BACKGROUND: Youth-friendly health services are a key strategy for improving young people’s health. This is the first study investigating provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme in South Africa since the national Department of Health took over its management in 2006. In a rural area of South Africa, we aimed to describe the characteristics of the publicly-funded primary healthcare facilities, investigate the proportion of facilities that provided the Youth Friendly Services programme and examine healthcare workers’ perceived barriers to and facilitators of the provision of youth-friendly health services. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nurses of all eight publicly-funded primary healthcare facilities in Agincourt sub-district, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts was conducted and data saturation was reached. RESULTS: Participants largely felt that the Youth Friendly Services programme was not implemented in their primary healthcare facilities, with the exception of one clinic. Barriers to provision reported by nurses were: lack of youth-friendly training among staff and lack of a dedicated space for young people. Four of the eight facilities did not appear to uphold the right of young people aged 12 years and older to access healthcare independently. Breaches in young people’s confidentiality to parents were reported. CONCLUSIONS: Participants reported that provision of the Youth Friendly Services programme is limited in this sub-district, and below the Department of Health’s target that 70% of primary healthcare facilities should provide these services. Whilst a dedicated space for young people is unlikely to be feasible or necessary, all facilities have the potential to be youth-friendly in terms of staff attitudes and actions. Training and on-going support should be provided to facilitate this; the importance of such training is emphasised by staff. More than one member of staff per facility should be trained to allow for staff turnover. As one of a few countrywide, government-run youth-friendly clinic programmes in a low or middle-income country, these results may be of interest to programme managers and policy makers in such settings. BioMed Central 2014-06-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4067688/ /pubmed/24934095 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-259 Text en Copyright © 2014 Geary et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Geary, Rebecca Sally
Gómez-Olivé, Francesc Xavier
Kahn, Kathleen
Tollman, Stephen
Norris, Shane Anthony
Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title_full Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title_fullStr Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title_short Barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural South Africa
title_sort barriers to and facilitators of the provision of a youth-friendly health services programme in rural south africa
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067688/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24934095
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-14-259
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