Targeting healthier adolescent behaviours
Interventions based on research, culture and gender sensitivity, sustainability and community are being developed through the PREPARE project to promote sexual and reproductive health. Parents, schools and communities are being engaged to change sexual and reproductive behaviours. The main goal is to reduce the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. PREPARE has set out to develop new and innovative intervention methods and programmes, while applying an integrated community prevention approach. Six objectives have been outlined to support work in this direction. These include formative studies among adolescents in four African sites (Cape Town and Limpopo (South Africa), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Kampala (Uganda) to develop specific intervention components. Studies of the content and design of materials used in previous interventions will be carried out against the background of new research evidence and relevant theory. Researchers will use results from work in the above two areas to design and implement new best practice programmes for promoting healthy sexual behaviour among adolescents, and will test these in Cape Town and Dar es Salaam. Project partners also aim to design and implement more focused interventions for administration in two sites: one on parent–child communication and parental support, and the other on culture-specific norms, attitudes and beliefs. Additionally, existing scales and instruments for data collection will be revised and new ones developed to meet the evaluation needs of the new best practice intervention programmes and focused efficacy studies. The final objective is to evaluate the intervention programmes, using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. PREPARE has piloted instruments and run a student survey in Limpopo, and produced an instrument for best practice studies in Cape Town and Dar es Salaam. Best practice intervention packages have been finalised for Cape Town and Dar es Salaam. Ongoing work involves baseline and follow-up data collection activities, and intervention applications. Data will be then need to be processed for statistical analyses and reporting to commence. PREPARE efforts are slated to reach a large number of students and effectively involve the wider community, in order to bring about positive changes to adolescents' current sexual and reproductive behaviours. Deviating from traditional curriculum-based interventions, this approach will go a long way towards improving safe sexual health and general personal safety, while breaking down harmful norms and even negative worldviews.