New Zealand governments need to change the way they set policies to help teenagers avoid problems with pregnancy and abortion, crime, suicide and mental health, says the Prime Minister's chief science advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman.
New Zealand governments need to change the way they set policies to help teenagers avoid problems with pregnancy and abortion, crime, suicide and mental health, says the Prime Minister's chief science advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman.
"By international standards, risk-taking among New Zealand adolescents is high," he said today in a 318-page report on an evidence-based approach to potential wide-ranging societal change.
Sir Peter proposed the research into New Zealand's problems with "risky and inappropriate behaviour by young people" when Prime Minister John Key made him his adviser, and today delivered a comprehensive proposal for extensive interventions over decades.
The report, Improving the Transition, was pulled together by panel of 10 hand-picked experts who looked at reducing the social and psychological problems of the nation's teenagers.
Sir Peter today released a "synthesis report" backed up by 22 chapters on specific issues to provide a platform from which governments might develop future policies to tackle cycles of inter-generational disadvantage estimated to affect between 10 percent and 20 percent of young people.
He noted that New Zealand had the world's highest rate of teenage suicide, its teens took too many risks in things such as smoking, drunkenness and pregnancy and the death-rates of children doubled during adolescence, compared with middle-childhood.
Binge drinking, bullying, suicide and other impulsive and risk-seeking behaviours leading to injury and criminal activity were all areas "justifiably of great concern" to the New Zealand public, officials and politicians.
Sir Peter said today that it was clear that an evidential approach was not being systematically used to decide what programmes to offer and which to maintain.
"Too many programmes appear to have been started on the basis of advocacy rather than evidence," he said. "Opportunities are being lost and funds are being wasted."
Some programmes should be targeted at individuals or families who were particularly at risk.
"To improve outcomes for New Zealand’s young people will require sustained effort over multiple electoral cycles," said Sir Peter. Many agencies would have to consider their priorities and approaches, and there would need to be greater integration of actions across ministries.
The report also identified knowledge gaps where research was needed.
But while it reported a number of general conclusions "to inform policy formation" it did not try to list specific actions, Sir Peter said.
No single intervention would bring the necessary changes: instead there would have to be an integrated and consistent approach involving new programmes and interventions.
"Some programmes aimed at high-risk groups will be expensive in the short term but justifiable over the longer term, both economically and in terms of social progress," he said.
While the present spending in this area was already enormous, "some of the current programmes are likely to be ineffective, poorly targeted and in some cases potentially harmful".
But programmes based on scientific evidence would allow resources to be redistributed to better effect without necessarily increasing public spending.
