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WHO has progressively strengthened its work for adolescent health, growing its portfolio of research, norms and standards, country support and advocacy, and expanding the scope of work across over 17 departments, regional and country offices to address the multifaceted needs of the global adolescent population. Central to a coordinated approach to adolescent health across the organization is the HQ Interdepartmental Technical Working Group on Adolescent Health and Well-being. In 2021, the group produced the first report on its work on adolescent health and well-being, celebrating efforts across many areas of work and all levels of the organization. This is the second in the series of biennial reports that comes on the wake of the Global Forum for Adolescents 2023 and is powered by its 1.8 Billion Young People for Change campaign. The report describes WHO’s efforts to elevate adolescent health and well-being through collaboration and by coordinating new initiatives, addressing emerging needs and establishing ambitious objectives with its development partners and adolescents. Target audience: this WHO serial publication is designed to be used by policy-makers, media and donors.

In 2019, the Executive Guideline Steering Group (GSG) for World Health Organization (WHO) maternal and perinatal health recommendations prioritized the updating of the existing WHO recommendations for intravenous (IV) versus intramuscular (IM) oxytocin for prevention of PPH after vaginal birth in response to the availability of new evidence. The recommendation in this document thus supersedes the previous WHO recommendations for the prevention of PPH as published in the 2012 guideline: WHO recommendations for the prevention and treatment of postpartum haemorrhage.

The purpose of the guideline is to provide evidence-based recommendations on nonsurgical interventions for chronic primary LBP (CPLBP) in adults, including older people, that can be delivered in primary and community care settings to improve CPLBP-related health and well-being outcomes. For this reason, the guideline does not consider interventions typically delivered in secondary or tertiary care settings (e.g. surgical or other invasive procedures) or workplace interventions. The target audience is health workers of all disciplines working in the primary and community care settings. In this context, the guideline is intended to be discipline neutral. The guidelines will be of use to clinical staff including medical doctors, nurses, allied health workers including chiropractors, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologists and community health workers, as well as public health programme and system managers.

Child maltreatment is a global public health problem. It can have detrimental and long-lasting effects on the development and health of children and occurs most frequently at the hands of parents and caregivers. These guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations on parenting interventions for parents and caregivers of children aged 0-17 years that are designed to reduce child maltreatment and harsh parenting, enhance the parent-child relationship, and prevent poor parent mental health and child emotional and behavioural problems. The guidelines are relevant to low-, middle- and high-income countries in all world regions. The recommendations in these guidelines are intended for a wide audience, including policy makers, development agencies and implementing partners, government health and social workers, and nongovernmental organizations.

World Health Organization (WHO)’s work on the life course – connecting healthy development and healthy ageing – aims to extend learning on healthy ageing and connect it to other efforts to improve people’s abilities and capacities, such as supports for early child development. This perspective considers the well-being of the whole person, not simply a focus on illness or disease. The third Life Course Network meeting followed two previous meetings in June and December 2022. The WHO Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing (MCA) hosted a hybrid meeting in Geneva, 28–30 November 2023, with over 40 experts leading eight working groups of 200 individuals from life course research centres, other academics, policy-makers, civil society and representatives from the six WHO regional offices and other WHO staff, attending the meeting in person. Working groups and the MCA Life Course team prepared and discussed 18 project papers, including a draft WHO-wide framework on putting a life course approach into practice. The meeting comprised six sessions to take stock of progress and facilitate learning across working groups.

he starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes. This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

The purpose of the guideline was to provide an evidence-informed recommendation on whether mass drug administration of azithromycin, as a public health intervention for the reduction of under-five mortality, should (a) be rolled out universally in low- and middle-income countries, (b) be applied only in some situational contexts in low-and middle-income countries or (c) not be used at all.