Crowdsourcing with adolescents in Senegal to address social norms limiting their access to sexual and reproductive health services
Medical Research Council
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
The overall aim of this research project is to co-develop an intervention with adolescents aged 15 to 19 in order to address the social norms that limit their access to available sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. The proposed research will take place in two regions of Senegal, one peri-urban area in Dakar region and one rural area in Kedougou region (South West Senegal). These regions are experiencing rapid population increases due to urbanisation and a thriving gold mining sector, respectively. In parallel with urbanisation and migration, there is likely to be an increase in sex work and other high-risk sexual behaviours. With SRH needs of adolescents already underserved, the health systems and health authorities of the two regions will need to plan an increase of service delivery and uptake to meet increased demand. In this project we will use qualitative formative research and crowdsourcing, an innovative approach to intervention co-development. Specifically, we will examine sexual and reproductive health policies and programmes available to adolescents living in the two regions. We will conduct focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with adolescents and SRH service providers to explore the norms underlying barriers to service use. We will collect stories of service use and through a panel of adolescents from each region will select the most important three barriers to access. We will then launch an open call for one-month to crowdsource ideas on interventions to address the selected social norms. Adolescents will be able to submit an intervention idea to one or all of the key barriers. The winners of this call, selected in collaboration with an established steering committee, will be supported in further developing an intervention to increase uptake of sexual and reproductive health services. The steering committee will rank the final interventions, with a winning entry selected based on established criteria
3.1 Primary prevention interventions to modify behaviours or promote well-being / Research Grant