Community support can be hard to win. Sex education and services for young adults are almost always controversial. Health professionals who want to meet the reproductive health needs of young adults must begin by helping the community understand and agree on the need for a program and on its goals and approaches. Often that entails persuading adults that young people should be treated in a caring, rather than authoritarian, manner.

In the long run, health and educational programs for young people can accomplish little unless communities acknowledge that young adults need special help and guidance if they are to become sexually responsible adults. Communities do not help young people by ignoring their need to understand sexual relations, by failing to protect them from abuse, or by abandoning them if they become pregnant or ill. Communities need to develop a positive policy toward guiding young people and then join in efforts to meet their various needs.

Young adults themselves want to learn about sex, sexual relationships, and reproductive health. They do not always appreciate the risks that they face, however, and they often do not protect themselves. Thus the second challenge for programs is to provide information and services in ways that persuade and enable young adults to conduct their sexual lives in a healthy manner. To help young people do this, a variety of approaches must be designed, appropriate to youth of differing ages, gender, sexual orientation, and sexual experience. Programs must be able to reach varying clienteles with convincing messages and with services that are useful, accessible, and comfortable to use.