Alison Hadley OBE, Director of the Teenage Pregnancy Knowledge Exchange at the University, led the Labour Government’s highly successful Teenage Pregnancy Strategy for England.

Her book, Teenage Pregnancy and Young Parenthood provides an insight into the strategy and considers how the lessons learnt from its success could be applied internationally.

Ms Hadley said: “Successful government policies that have been carefully delivered and implemented can be quickly forgotten, and energy and resources wasted in working out new approaches. This book shares lessons of the successful strategy to help sustain progress in England, and contribute to international efforts to improve young people’s reproductive and sexual health, highlighting the innovative way the strategy addressed complex policy issues.

“We were also keen to pay tribute to the hard work of the many hundreds of committed individuals involved in the strategy who were determined to bring about change and make a difference to young people’s lives.” Promoting a ‘whole systems’ multi-agency approach, the book translates evidence into clear action, and combines theory and practice alongside case studies to demonstrate how to implement policy successfully.

The book is aimed at policymakers and practitioners dealing with young people’s health, as well as university students in the fields of psychology, health studies, social work, youth work, education, social policy and sociology.

The book was co-authored by Professor Roger Ingham, Professor of Health and Community Psychology at the Centre for Sexual Health Research at the University of Southampton, who was the research advisor on the strategy’s Independent Advisory Group, and Dr Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli from the World Health Organization’s Department of Reproductive Health and Research.