Adolescence is a critical period for reproductive health, wellbeing, and future life opportunities. Yet adolescents often face significant barriers to accurate information, protective services, bodily autonomy, and confidential, youth-friendly care. This Collection seeks to highlight research on adolescent reproductive health, agency, and protection, particularly in settings where gender inequality, poverty, stigma, restrictive norms, harmful practices, limited health system capacity, and intersecting forms of exclusion shape young people's reproductive choices, safety, and outcomes.

Progress in adolescent sexual and reproductive health has been driven by investments in comprehensive sexuality education, youth-friendly services, prevention of child marriage and female genital cutting, and gender-transformative programming. However, major challenges persist, including adolescent pregnancy, interpersonal violence (intimate partner violence, dating violence, family violence, sexual coercion, and peer violence), unmet need for services, school dropout, harmful practices, and limited autonomy in decision-making. Adolescents affected by displacement, disability, poverty, humanitarian crises, migration, ethnic minority status, or social marginalization may face compounding and intersecting risks that require tailored, context-sensitive, inclusive, and equity-oriented responses.

A growing body of evidence emphasizes the importance of adolescent agency, empowerment, and resilience as both outcomes and protective factors. Interventions that adopt gender-transformative approaches, utilize social and behavior change communication, address intersecting inequalities, and actively engage young people in design and implementation show promise in shifting harmful norms and improving health outcomes. Continued research is needed to understand how different intervention modalities affect adolescent reproductive health, safety, and empowerment across diverse contexts and among adolescents who are often underserved or excluded from mainstream services.

Future studies may evaluate multi-component interventions that integrate education, health services, community engagement, legal protection, economic strengthening, and social norm change. Evidence generated with meaningful adolescent participation and grounded in local realities will be essential to design services and programs that are acceptable, inclusive, effective, and sustainable.

In this Collection, we invite submissions covering a range of topics, including but not limited to:

Reproductive Health and Services

• Adolescent pregnancy prevention, care, support, and social consequences
• Access to contraception, counselling, and youth-friendly reproductive health services
• Comprehensive sexuality education and school-based reproductive health interventions
• Menstrual health, school participation, and adolescent wellbeing

Harmful Practices and Violence

• Female genital cutting/mutilation: prevalence, consequences, prevention, and support for affected adolescents
• Child marriage prevention and response
• Interpersonal violence, including intimate partner violence, family violence, sexual coercion, and peer violence
• Linkages between violence, harmful practices, and reproductive health outcomes

Agency, Empowerment, and Resilience

• Adolescent agency, decision-making, and reproductive autonomy
• Resilience, coping strategies, and protective factors among adolescents facing adversity
• Gender-transformative interventions and approaches
• Social and behavior change communication strategies targeting adolescents, families, and communities

Intervention Research and Implementation

• Multi-component and integrated intervention models
• Community-based, school-based, health facility-based, and digital interventions
• Intervention effectiveness across different contexts and populations, including adolescents living with disabilities, migrants, ethnic minorities, and other socially marginalized groups
• Implementation science and scale-up of evidence-based programs

Equity and Context

• Adolescent reproductive health in humanitarian, displacement, migrant, and low-resource settings
• Intersecting vulnerabilities: disability, poverty, migration status, ethnic minority status, social marginalization, and other forms of exclusion
• Participatory and adolescent-centered research methodologies, including inclusive approaches that meaningfully engage adolescents from socially marginalized populations

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being and SDG 5, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

All submissions in this Collection undergo the journal’s standard peer review process. Similarly, all manuscripts authored by a Guest Editor(s) will be handled by the Editor-in-Chief. As an open access publication, this journal levies an article processing fee. We recognize that many key stakeholders may not have access to such resources and are committed to supporting participation in this issue wherever resources are a barrier. For more information about what support may be available, please visit OA funding and support, or email OAfundingpolicy@springernature.com or the Editor-in-Chief.