Rath 2020.
| Study name | Community youth teams facilitating participatory adolescent groups, youth leadership activities and livelihood promotion to improve school attendance, dietary diversity and mental health among adolescent girls in rural eastern India |
| Methods |
Study design: cluster‐RCT Country: India |
| Participants | Adolescent girls (and boys) aged 10–19 years Inclusion criteria: a. adolescent girls aged 10–19 years living in the 38 study clusters during the baseline and/or endline surveys are eligible to participate in study interviews. b. adolescent boys and girls, aged 10–19 years, within the study area (whether living there or not). Exclusion criteria: a. girls who decline to be interviewed or who are living outside the study clusters Note: Although, for financial and logistical reasons, our trial outcomes relate only to girls, we decided to include both boys and girls in the intervention because the intervention activities were relevant and potentially beneficial to boys and because some health‐related problems [... ] may be more effectively addressed by engaging with both boys and girls. Stated purpose: to assess whether an intervention involving a community youth team facilitating participatory peer‐led adolescent groups, youth leadership activities and livelihood promotion can improve school attendance, nutrition and mental health amongst adolescent girls in rural India |
| Interventions |
Intervention: Jharkhand Initiative for Adolescent Health (JIAH) The intervention is a community youth team that delivers participatory adolescent groups, youth leadership activities, and livelihood promotion. Each cluster has a community youth team delivering parallel intervention activities. The team comprises a peer facilitator (yuva saathi, meaning “friend of youth”) aged 20–25 years, a youth leadership facilitator and a livelihood promoter. Activities are open to all girls and boys in the community and include sports events such as football tournaments, archery, and run‐a‐thons, as well as problem‐solving sessions and nature walks. Both intervention and control clusters have livelihood promoters; livelihood promotion activities aim to provide adolescents with practical skills which they can use in later life and that improve food security for families. In each cluster, yuva saathis facilitate meetings which are mainly held in community meeting spaces. The first five meetings aim to introduce adolescents to the intervention. After the first five meetings, the groups work through four consecutive Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) cycles. Each PLA cycle comprises five to seven meetings and has four distinct phases: (1) identifying problems affecting adolescents in the community (meeting 1), (2) identifying and deciding on strategies to address these problems (meetings 2–3), (3) implementing the strategies (meetings 4–6), and (4) evaluating the process (meeting 7). Control: Waiting list, usual care, etc. |
| Outcomes |
Participants'outcomes of interest for this review
Economic outcomes Nil Time points: baseline, post‐intervention (immediate post‐intervention) |
| Starting date | 1 December 2015 (recruitment start date: 1 March 2016) |
| Contact information | Kelly Rose‐Clarke, kelly.rose‐clarke@kcl.ac.uk |
| Notes |
Source of funding: programme grant from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation to Ekjut and University College London Prospective trial registration number: ISRCTN17206016 |