• Facility hours are convenient for adolescents;
• Facility location is convenient for adolescents;
• Facility has adequate space and sufficient pri­vacy;
• Facility has comfortable surroundings for ado­lescents;
• Staff have been specially trained to work with or to provide services to adolescents;
• Staff treat adolescent clients with respect;
• Staff honor privacy and confidentiality of ado­lescent clients;
• Staff allow adequate time for adolescent client and provider interaction;
• Peer counselors are available on site;
• Young male clients are equally welcomed and served as young female clients are;
• Group health discussions are available;
• Necessary referrals are available;
• Service fees are affordable for adolescent cli­ents;
• Drop-in clients are welcomed, and appoint­ments are arranged rapidly;
• A wide range of reproductive services are avail­able;
•  Educational materials are available on site for clients to take home;
• Adolescents perceive that they are welcome re­gardless of their age and marital status; and
• Adolescents perceive that providers will be at­tentive to their needs.

Evaluators create this index by assigning a score to each item: 2 points for complete fulfillment of the condition, 1 point for partial fulfillment of the condition, and 0 for lack of fulfillment. Evaluators may derive a total facil­ity score if they first sum the item scores and then di­vide that result by the total number of points possible (Nelson, MacLaren, and Magnani, 2000).

To overcome these barriers, a number of service-pro­viding organizations have sought to make their services more “youth friendly.” By offering more youth-friendly reproductive health services, programs may effectively attract young people and may provide quality reproduc­tive health services in a comfortable and responsive environment. Adolescents can receive services in a health facility, such as a clinic, health post or hospital, from trained personnel who provide services in a work­place or school setting, through community outreach workers or peer educators. Regardless of the venue, services must have special characteristics that attract, serve, and retain adolescent clients.

This indicator is most appropriate for assessing facili­ties and services that were not specifically designed for adolescents (such as a family planning clinics, health posts, or pharmacies), because adolescent facilities were presumably designed with the characteristics of ado­lescent friendliness in mind. However, this indicator can also monitor the adolescent friendliness of adoles­cent-centered facilities over time. For example, after a baseline assessment, the program manager may plan to make changes in services over the next 6 months and may allow those changes to become part of the service-delivery protocols over the next 12 months. The pro­gram manager may then decide to undertake a follow-up assessment 18 months later to determine if the changes occurred. The follow-up assessment should measure the same characteristics it measured in the ini­tial assessment.

The Pathfinder International-developed Rapid Assessment of Youth Friendly Reproductive Health Services (2003) can be used for the initial assessment.  If a facility wishes to quantify its status as one that provides youth friendly services, the Certification Tool for Youth Friendly Services (Pathfinder, 2004) can be used.