Sarah Castle Consultancy

Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

Challenges faced by adolescents across the world include early pregnancy and parenthood, difficulties accessing contraception and safe abortion together with high rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Socio-cultural taboos around pre-marital pregnancy create a demand for family planning among adolescents whilst, paradoxically, high levels of stigma often make it difficult for them to access. In addition, health workers may impede the delivery of quality care by failing to provide young people with supportive, non-judgmental services. In order to address these barriers, young people's participation in designing youth-friendly programmes appears to be crucial.

June 2020 - Rutgers International, Centre of Expertise on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, The Netherlands: A mobile-web survey and parallel qualitative research took place among young people in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nepal and Indonesia about the impact of COVID-19 prevention measures on their sexual and reproductive health. The findings indicated an increase in unintended pregnancies due to a lack of family planning and abortion services. In addition, the pandemic had also led to a rise in early marriage, gender-based violence, mental health issues and the stigmatising of young sex workers and those living with HIV.

January 2019 - The Population Council (Breakthrough Research): Literature review on impact of mass media and social media on young people's family planning knowledge, attitudes and uptake in the countries of the Ouagadougou Partnership. It was found that although the use of mass media was a proven practice, social and digital media initiatives are relatively new, often youth-led and not, as yet, robustly evaluated even though their impact is likely to be to be considerable.

January 2019 : The World Health Organisation: Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR) Human Reproduction Program (HRP) - Development of a working paper on use of sub-national data on adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) for decision-making, and finalization of guidance on post-project evaluations of ASRH projects and programmes.

January 2018 - Care, Boston, USA: Analysis (using SPSS software) of baseline, intervention and control data to assess the impact of AidMatch intervention to improve sexual and reproductive health services for young people in Goma town, Democratic Republic of Congo.

December 2016 - Marie Stopes International : Carried out field research to frame the design of MSI's Sahelian Youth Strategy using market segmentation profiles to better tailor family planning services for young people in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Niger.

September 2016 - Palladium: In collaboration with the University of Cape Coast, I designed and executed an evaluation of Ghana Health Services' 'Youth Corners' initiative as part of the DFID-funded Ghana Adolescent Reproductive Health Project (GHARH) in the Brong Ahafo region. The Youth Corners were located within mainstream facilities to provide specialised 'youth-friendly' services. They successfully attracted young clients by making games ,TV and other leisure activities available.

January 2016 - The Palladium Group - Carried out scoping mission for DFID Mozambique on improving adolescent access to family planning services at the community level in areas with extremely high rates of early pregnancy and marriage, as well as widespread sexual violence.

Documents

	Rutgers 6-Country Youth SRHR & COVID 19 Study - Report			Adolescent Corners Situational Analysis
	Successful programmatic approaches to facilitating IUD uptake:			Practical guidance for conducting post-project evaluations of adolescent sexual and reproductive health projects
	Family Planning and Youth in West Africa: Mass media, digital media, and social and behavior change communication strategies