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Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia

Despite its cultural and biological importance, limited knowledge about menstruation and cultural taboos in many contexts mean that menarche often brings fear and stigma. In Ethiopia, the context of this paper, lack of knowledge and the stigma around menstruation create challenges for adolescent gir...

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Autores principales: Baird, Sarah, Hamory, Joan, Gezahegne, Kiya, Pincock, Kate, Woldehanna, Tassew, Yadete, Workneh, Jones, Nicola
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9304804/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35873135
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2022.838961
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author Baird, Sarah
Hamory, Joan
Gezahegne, Kiya
Pincock, Kate
Woldehanna, Tassew
Yadete, Workneh
Jones, Nicola
author_facet Baird, Sarah
Hamory, Joan
Gezahegne, Kiya
Pincock, Kate
Woldehanna, Tassew
Yadete, Workneh
Jones, Nicola
author_sort Baird, Sarah
collection PubMed
description Despite its cultural and biological importance, limited knowledge about menstruation and cultural taboos in many contexts mean that menarche often brings fear and stigma. In Ethiopia, the context of this paper, lack of knowledge and the stigma around menstruation create challenges for adolescent girls related to menstrual hygiene management and their reproductive health more broadly. This paper uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial (cRCT), with 97 communities (kebeles) randomly assigned to treatment or control, to assess the impact of a gender-transformative life-skills intervention [Act With Her-Ethiopia (AWH-E)] on the menstrual health literacy of very young adolescent girls and boys (10–14) in two diverse regions of Ethiopia (South Gondar, Amhara and East Hararghe, Oromia). The evaluation employs a longitudinal mixed-methods design, with baseline data collected in late 2017/early 2018 and follow-up data collected in late 2019/early 2020. Quantitative surveys were undertaken with 2,492 very young adolescents and their primary caregivers, and complemented by qualitative interviews with 291 adolescents and their caregivers, as well as 96 key informants at community and district levels. Our quantitative findings highlight large and statistically significant improvements on norms around menstruation, knowledge about menstruation and biological function, and knowledge and behavior related to menstrual hygiene management, but with important differences by location and gender. Qualitative findings further unpack these gender and regional differences, highlighting the importance of adapting programming to the local context and, where possible, connecting to other health and gender initiatives. This analysis helps fill the evidence gap on “what works” to improve menstrual health literacy in rural low- and middle-income contexts.
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spelling pubmed-93048042022-07-23 Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia Baird, Sarah Hamory, Joan Gezahegne, Kiya Pincock, Kate Woldehanna, Tassew Yadete, Workneh Jones, Nicola Front Glob Womens Health Global Women's Health Despite its cultural and biological importance, limited knowledge about menstruation and cultural taboos in many contexts mean that menarche often brings fear and stigma. In Ethiopia, the context of this paper, lack of knowledge and the stigma around menstruation create challenges for adolescent girls related to menstrual hygiene management and their reproductive health more broadly. This paper uses a cluster-randomized controlled trial (cRCT), with 97 communities (kebeles) randomly assigned to treatment or control, to assess the impact of a gender-transformative life-skills intervention [Act With Her-Ethiopia (AWH-E)] on the menstrual health literacy of very young adolescent girls and boys (10–14) in two diverse regions of Ethiopia (South Gondar, Amhara and East Hararghe, Oromia). The evaluation employs a longitudinal mixed-methods design, with baseline data collected in late 2017/early 2018 and follow-up data collected in late 2019/early 2020. Quantitative surveys were undertaken with 2,492 very young adolescents and their primary caregivers, and complemented by qualitative interviews with 291 adolescents and their caregivers, as well as 96 key informants at community and district levels. Our quantitative findings highlight large and statistically significant improvements on norms around menstruation, knowledge about menstruation and biological function, and knowledge and behavior related to menstrual hygiene management, but with important differences by location and gender. Qualitative findings further unpack these gender and regional differences, highlighting the importance of adapting programming to the local context and, where possible, connecting to other health and gender initiatives. This analysis helps fill the evidence gap on “what works” to improve menstrual health literacy in rural low- and middle-income contexts. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9304804/ /pubmed/35873135 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2022.838961 Text en Copyright © 2022 Baird, Hamory, Gezahegne, Pincock, Woldehanna, Yadete and Jones. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Global Women's Health
Baird, Sarah
Hamory, Joan
Gezahegne, Kiya
Pincock, Kate
Woldehanna, Tassew
Yadete, Workneh
Jones, Nicola
Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title_full Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title_fullStr Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title_full_unstemmed Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title_short Improving Menstrual Health Literacy Through Life-Skills Programming in Rural Ethiopia
title_sort improving menstrual health literacy through life-skills programming in rural ethiopia
topic Global Women's Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9304804/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35873135
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fgwh.2022.838961
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