Bringing Youth-Friendly Services to Scale in Ethiopia

Stigma, service costs, and provider bias pose formidable barriers to Ethiopian young people’s ability to access sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. To address these barriers, in 2005 Pathfinder International and the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) partnered to introduce and scale up youth-friendly services (YFS) in the Ethiopian public health system. YFS—an evidence-based approach to reducing barriers to service uptake among young people—lay the foundation for Ethiopia’s health system to meet the SRH needs and rights of the country’s largely underserved adolescent and youth population. This technical brief analyses the scale-up efforts to date.