DRC

Site located in Kinshasa, DRC

The Global Early Adolescent Study is partnering with University of Kinshasa School of Public Health, a local Congolese university entity specialised in public health training, research and community services at the national and regional levels. KSPH was founded in 1984 with the support of USAID and a consortium of US Universities and is headquartered in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Established in 1984, the KSPH “aims to be a center of excellence in public health at the national and regional levels. Its core mission is to contribute to the improvement of the health and well-being of Congolese people in three ways elucidated in the Mission Statement, Services and Vision documents.

These include: carrying out research to identify and to resolve public health problems; engaging in community activities designed to promote community participation; and strengthening the capacity to build partnerships, self-sufficiency and self-determination.

The Kinshasa School of Public Health provides training at the master’s and PhD level in public health, health economics, nutritional epidemiology and field epidemiology and laboratory as well as a variety of short courses in a range of public health specialties (e.g. research methods, finance, monitoring and evaluation) and continuing education for health professionals. Additionally, there is a focus on providing quality research to assess the burden of disease and its impact on populations, to identify solutions to health problems, to evaluate health services and ways to strengthen the capacity of health agents, and to evaluate the impact of health programs. As an overall part of this mission, the school is tasked with providing support to disease control and surveillance, epidemiological investigations, disaster management, and quality control of public health laboratories.

Kinshasa is the first longitudinal site of the GEAS and is operated by the Kinshasa School of Public Health (KSPH) in collaboration with the GEAS Coordinating Center at Johns Hopkins University. The project is jointly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of the global Passages Project. Passages is a project led by the Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University (IRH) and a consortium of partners including the GEAS, Save the Children, Tearfund and FHI 360. The Passages Project, funded by USAID, aims to transform social norms at scale to promote family planning and reproductive health by testing and evaluating normative change interventions.

Under the Passages project, Kinshasa School of Public Health is partnering with GEAS to evaluate Bien Grandir! (Growing Up Great), a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum interventionfor very young adolescents (VYAs) in Kinshasa,Democratic Republic of the Congo led by Save the Children and it’s community-based organization (CBOs) partners to transform reproductive health and gender norms among VYAs in Kinshasa.

GUG! is a multi-level intervention for VYAs aged 10-14 years old, their parents and caregivers and other influential community members. It uses an ecological approach to provide information and address social and gender norms related to reproductive health and wellbeing at each of these levels, with the goal of improving both in-school and out-of-school VYAs’ sexual and reproductive health outcomes in later adolescence. Specifically, GUG! aims to increase (1) VYAs’ knowledge of puberty and reproductive development, (2) VYAs’ and parents’ gender-equitable behaviors, and (3) use of family planning and other reproductive health services among VYAs as they age into older adolescence.

GUG! was informed by other successful approaches for improving gender and reproductive health among adolescents, and it incorporates evidence-based recommendations for health interventions with young people. It purposefully targets VYAs, a critical demographic group, to reach them prior to the onset of puberty. This early intervention is intended to provide an opportunity to shape the health trajectory of an adolescent’s life course and proactively prevent reproductive and other health problems, rather than addressing health issues as they arise. It also employs a holistic approach to VYA health interventions, acknowledging the multiple layers of influence from parents, peers, teachers and community leaders.