Puberty health education for Iranian adolescent girls: challenges and priorities to design school-based interventions for mothers and daughters

Objective (s): Puberty is the most important milestone of change in teenage life. This is a time to become adult with reproductive ability. Girls experience a wide variety of physical، emotional، social and sexual changes in this period. Lack of information، skills and preparations endanger their health. Puberty health includes principals and cares to promote and maintain individuals’ physical، emotional، social and sexual health that can be achieved by education. This paper reviews evidence for puberty health education in Iran.

A review of Iranian articles related to knowledge، attitude and practice of adolescent girls about puberty and menstruation was carried out using the following databases: PubMed، Elsevier، SID، Medlib، Magiran، Iranmedex، Irandoc and Google Scholar. Search strategy included using key words adolescent، puberty، puberty health، female and girls.

Challenges related to puberty health education can be categorized to 6 main themes: insufficient knowledge، lack of appropriate attitude and practice; lack of attention to influencing factors; limitation of adolescents’ informational sources [mothers، peers and health educators]; disagreement about the right time to start teaching different aspects of adolescent health; Lack of appropriate educational content and disuse of appropriate methods of health education.

The findings suggest that there is need for skills-based training and interventional strategies for the teaching of physical and specially sexual، emotional and social maturity and socially-culturally suitable educational content for mothers and daughters in Iran.