About this Research Topic

Background

Globally, adolescents constitute about one billion of the world’s population, with 70% living in lower and middle-income countries. Adolescence is a period of life during which individuals reach sexual maturity and transition from childhood into young adulthood, and it is during this time that many health behaviours and experiences are shaped, particularly in relation to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and access to SRH services. While much research has focused on how factors such as poverty and gender inequalities shape SRH during adolescence, less research has focused on the concept of ‘hope’ and how this may shape adolescents’ interaction with SRH risk. While there are various ways to understand ‘hope’, we understand hope as a property mediating how individuals respond to their wider social contexts, and this in turn may shape health, and specifically SRH outcomes for adolescents.

Much research on hope has been driven by psychologists in the global North, with individualised, psychological, understandings of hope. While this provides a productive platform for thinking about the topic, recent work from the global South has suggested that simply ‘importing’ understandings of hope from the global North does not capture local understandings of hope in lower and middle-income countries. Emerging research from the global South has developed new ways of thinking about hope and shown connections between hope within local social contexts and HIV-related behaviours, particularly in relation to HIV-treatment. This research needs to be built upon and extended, developing new conceptualisations, local understandings, meanings, constructs and definitions of hope, and expand our understanding of whether and how hope shapes health behaviour, particularly around SRH.

Building research on hope and health is particularly important for adolescents. In today’s context, endpoints of adolescence are often less clear-cut and commonly around the adoption of a broad range of adult roles and responsibilities, including the (anticipated) transition to employment, financial independence, as well as the formation of life partnerships. Developing understandings of how hope operates dynamically in changing contexts for adolescents, and how hope shapes young women’s and men’s SRH outcomes, and access to services, as well as what can be done to strengthen hope remains under-considered.

This research topic aims to bring together quantitative and qualitative research articles describing the relationship between hope and SRH-related experiences and behaviors, including how ‘risks’ and opportunities are constructed and navigated, and how this may in turn influence their engagement (i.e., awareness, access and uptake) with SRH services, including for HIV, among adolescents. Manuscripts on how hope and SRH interact with COVID-19 are also welcome. We also seek for papers focused on developing locally relevant constructs, definitions and measures of hope for adolescents, and how hope shapes SRH. This may include reflections on how we might strengthen our methods and research practices to better understand adolescents’ experiences of hope over time and changing contexts. Finally, understanding how programmatic and structural interventions, laws and policies may (or may not) shape adolescents’ hope in the context of their SRH is important. We are interested in original research expanding on these themes, as well as review articles looking to synthesise knowledge and generate new areas and understandings.

Keywords: Adolescent health, Hope, Sexual and reproductive health, Access to health services, LMICs

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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