page_title: Youth
section_title: Health and mortality
hierarchical_section_title: Youth / School and education / Health and mortality
caption_attribution_description: English: this picture proves all claims about africa being a hopeless continent wrong
context_page_description: Youth is the time of life when one is young, and often means the time between childhood and adulthood. It is also defined as "the appearance, freshness, vigor, spirit, etc., characteristic of one who is young". Its definitions of a specific age range varies, as youth is not defined chronologically as a stage that can be tied to specific age ranges; nor can its end point be linked to specific activities, such as taking unpaid work or having sexual relations.
  Youth is an experience that may shape an individual's level of dependency, which can be marked in various ways according to different cultural perspectives. Personal experience is marked by an individual's cultural norms or traditions, while a youth's level of dependency means the extent to which they still rely on their family emotionally and economically.
context_section_description: The leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults are due to certain health-risk behaviors. These behaviors are often established during youth and extend into adulthood. Since the risk behaviors in adulthood and youth are interrelated, problems in adulthood are preventable by influencing youth behavior.
  A 2004 mortality study of youth (defined in this study as ages 10–24) mortality worldwide found that 97% of deaths occurred in low to middle-income countries, with the majority in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Maternal conditions accounted for 15% of female deaths, while HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis were responsible for 11% of deaths; 14% of male and 5% of female deaths were attributed to traffic accidents, the largest cause overall. Violence accounted for 12% of male deaths. Suicide was the cause of 6% of all deaths.
  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed its Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) in 2003 to help assess risk behavior. YRBSS monitors six categories of priority health-risk behaviors among youth and young adults. These are behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence;
  tobacco, alcohol and other drug use;
  sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection;
  unhealthy dietary behaviors;
  physical inactivity—plus overweight.
  YRBSS includes a national school-based survey conducted by CDC as well as state and local school-based surveys conducted by education and health agencies.
  Universal school-based interventions such as formal classroom curricula, behavioural management practices, role‐play, and goal‐setting may be effective in preventing tobacco use, alcohol use, illicit drug use, antisocial behaviour, and improving physical activity of young people.
caption: Youths in South Africa partying
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