Adolescent and Young Adult Period Poverty: A Systematic Review

Despite global efforts to identify adolescent and young adult period poverty and relieve these burdens in low- and middle-income countries, there is limited research regarding the prevalence of period poverty in high-income countries. The aim of this systematic review is to quantify the prevalence of adolescent period poverty within the United States and Canada, as well as summarize the effectiveness of published interventions to address this issue. This systematic review identified 1847 unique articles, of which 106 were screened for full-text review, and eight were included in data extraction and analysis. Our analysis identified a wide range of the prevalence of adolescent period poverty from 9% to 65%. The prevalence of period poverty in these studies suggests that clinicians should consider screening for period poverty when obtaining a menstrual history in adolescents, adding to social determinants of health screening. In addition, we found no published, controlled trials of interventions based in the United States and Canada to address period poverty.