Responding to adolescent women's reproductive health concerns: empowering clients through health literacy.

Adolescents have particular needs in health care that are often not met. Health care providers can help overcome barriers that hinder adolescents' effective use of health services by incorporating health literacy strategies that are developmentally and contextually appropriate, and that actively involve adolescents in their own learning. Based on extensive practice and research experience in Canada with rural and urban high school adolescent women, we offer suggestions for how health care providers can respond to adolescent women's reproductive health concerns by teaching these young women how to increase their skills in functional, communicative/interactive, and critical health literacy.