Saúde em Debate

The first special issue of 2026 of Saúde em Debate, ‘Health policies and social protection for adolescents and young people’, “brings together authors from diverse academic, research, and public management institutions who conceptualize, analyze, and strengthen the agenda for the protection, care, and social participation of adolescents and young people in the context of Brazilian public policies. The works dialogue with the contemporary challenges of the organization of actions and services within the scope of the Unified Health System (SUS), emphasizing the role of Social Determinants of Health (SDH), the centrality of Primary Health Care (PHC), and the need to expand the spaces for listening, participation, and protagonism of adolescents and young people” (excerpt from the Presentation of the journal).

Topics covered: Multidimensional poverty among adolescents in Brazil; Care as a protector for the mental health of adolescents; Attentive listening and meaning-making in adolescents’ relationships with school; Knowledge of adolescents about health services; Healthcare professionals on caring for transgender adolescents; Youth cultures, health, and art: Perspectives from young people living in the urban periphery; Unhealthy eating markers and associated factors among school adolescents in Montes Claros (MG); The use of electronic cigarettes and other drugs among adolescents; Intentionally self-inflicted injuries in adolescents from Mato Grosso, Brazil; ‘Suicide is not a clinical case topic!’: On taboos, particularities, and gaps in pediatric medical education; Intentionally self-inflicted injuries in adolescents residing in a state within the Legal Amazon region; The abandonment of outpatient nutritional follow-up in children and adolescents; Psychological suffering in institutional care units for adolescents; The complementarity of life cycles in human development; Adolescence in a fast-transitioning world: Tentative policies as regards the harmful use of substances; Primary Health Care in guaranteeing adolescents’ right to health in Brazil; Suicide trends in Brazil and the issue of adolescence; Sexual violence, pregnancy and abortion during adolescence: Reality of Brazilian society; In-Person Innovation Workshop for the Digital Health Booklet for Adolescents; critical review of the book ‘Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism’; Suicide in adolescence: A psychoanalytic approach.