Adolescent resilience and empowerment: a concept for clinical care and community health

Abstract

Background: Resilience can be defined as a process by which individuals cope with and overcome the adverse conditions they have faced or currently face, such as a chronic condition or living in a deprived environment. The lessons that this concept bring can be used to empower young people in nearly all types of setting and circumstances. Objectives 1. Review how the concept of resilience was born and has been used over time 2. Apply the concept of resilience and empowerment in the everyday care of adolescents 3. Implement empowerment approaches in the design of community health promotion interventions Content: Using clinical vignettes, the presentation will illustrate how a health care provider can use the concept of resilience. It will stress the importance of a network approach in delivering health care to adolescents, as well as the importance to associate curative and preventive aspects of any investigation or treatment. It will exemplify the up-to-date concept of shared decision making and some of the ethical issues which it includes. Then, the presentation will focus on some concrete examples as how to implement empowerment strategies in the design, the implementation and the evaluation of preventive / health promotion interventions. It will emphasize the necessity to adopt an inter sectorial approach and will outline the advantages and pitfalls of the integration of young people in any program and how to address them. Conclusion: By the end of the presentation, participants will have gained more insight in how to provide participatory health care to adolescents and how to promote youth contribution in health promoting interventions.