PRB

The March 2022 edition of PRB’s Youth Family Planning Policy Scorecard evaluates the favorability of 28 current national policy and program environments for youth access to sexual and reproductive health services. The Scorecard allows users to quickly assess the extent to which a country’s policy environment enables and supports youth access to and use of family planning through the promotion of evidence-based practices. Users can explore the digital interface and self-select countries to compile their own Scorecard!

Kenya’s devolved system of governance creates opportunities and challenges for county-level program planners and advocates trying to sustain and expand budget commitments for family planning and reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health. This best practices brief and video outlines PACE Kenya’s systematic approach to working with partners in several Kenyan counties to increase political and financial commitments for family planning and strengthen accountability for those commitments.

PACE’s Youth Multimedia Campaigns training program equips youth advocates with the skills to create innovative digital campaigns, tell compelling population health stories, and build movements for policy change within their countries.

PACE’s Youth Multimedia Campaigns training program equips youth advocates with the skills to create innovative digital campaigns, tell compelling population health stories, and build movements for policy change within their countries. Using data-driven multimedia and events, youth participants collaborate with their peers to share powerful advocacy messages focused on the health and well-being of their communities. The PACE training program supports the institutional growth of youth-led organizations as well as a burgeoning network of youth leaders passionate about population dynamics and reproductive health.

PACE has partnered with competitively selected youth-led teams in Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Uganda to amplify their policy advocacy on topics such as youth-friendly family planning services, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), child marriage, gender-based violence (GBV), fistula prevention, and maternal health.

Three youth-led advocacy organizations—from Malawi, Nepal, and Nigeria—joined the 2021 training program, where they built or strengthened their storytelling, video production, policy communication, and social media engagement skills. Youth used these skills to develop a new multimedia advocacy campaign pushing for advancements in youth sexual and reproductive health or environmental protection in their communities. Alumni fellows from Bridge Connect Africa Initiative were among the training coaches for the 2021 program and presented several sessions.

Participating youth and their organizations receive tailored technical and leadership training and ongoing mentorship around techniques in policy communication, fact-based and data-driven advocacy, and multimedia production (text, graphics, images, video, and audio). Using accessible technology, including mobile phones and social media platforms, PACE-trained advocates build engaging campaigns focused on specific policy advocacy objectives, targeted at their peers, communities, and key decisionmakers. As part of the program, youth advocates are also expected to provide technical assistance and training to other youth in their communities, passing down their skills, expanding the reach of their campaigns, and sustaining local youth-led policy advocacy.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT: Bridge Connect Africa Initiative

Two Nigerian activists, Sani Muhammad and Mubarak Idris, participated in the inaugural year of PACE’s Youth Multimedia Campaigns training program in 2018 and quickly established themselves as outstanding and committed population and reproductive health youth champions. With support from PACE, Muhammad and Idris successfully launched their youth-led organization, Bridge Connect Africa Initiative (BCAI), and partnered with PACE to lead the 2019 training program for two new youth teams in the Kano and Kaduna States of northern Nigeria.

The two campaigns, focused on ending child marriage and increasing access to youth-friendly family planning services, each generated positive policy change. After seeing the PACE-sponsored video and social media campaign generate broad support, the governor of Kano State made a public declaration to end child marriage through support of the Child Protection Bill. While the legislation is still pending, sections of the bill that provide for compulsory schooling for all children as a way of tackling child marriage have been adopted into a state-level policy. In Kaduna State, the governor’s chief of staff committed to sharing a video message to call on the state government to promote availability and access of family planning services for women and young people.

Alumni Showcase

Multimedia campaigns produced by alumni from each cohort of the Youth Multimedia Campaigns training program are highlighted here.

2020 Campaigns: Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, and South Sudan

2019 Campaigns: Kano and Kaduna States, Nigeria

• Accessibility of Family Planning Services in Kaduna State: A Story from Rigasa Community.
• Child Marriage in Kano Nigeria: A Call for the Domestication of the Child Protection Bill.

2018 Campaigns: Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda

PRB partnered with Mombasa-based Stretchers Youth Organization to develop an engaging visual presentation and series of WhatsApp videos that call on Mombasa County, Kenya, health and finance officials to improve the budgets for adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH). Specifically, the products seek an increase in the allocation of health budget funds to the line item that houses AYSRH and to allocate part of the AYSRH budget to youth-friendly health services (YFHS).

Mombasa County has a youthful population, with more than 240,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24. Among this age group, 38% of women want to delay or prevent pregnancy, but only 6% of young men and women accessed contraceptives in 2019. Strengthening youth-friendly service delivery is proven to increase youth’s access to and use of contraception. Mombasa County allocated KES500,000 to AYSRH in Fiscal Year (FY) 2019/20, but more investment is needed to ensure contraceptives are available and accessible to all young people.

The presentation that PRB and Stretchers Youth Organization developed illustrates the barriers that prevent young people from accessing and using contraception—such as provider attitudes and social norms—and emphasizes that youth’s need for contraceptives will grow over time. Acknowledging the county’s allocation to AYSRH in FY2019/20, it highlights examples of youth-friendly service elements that the county could fund and that are proven to increase contraceptive use among young people. The presentation also shows that although the county health budget is increasing, in the last three years less than 1% of it has been allocated to Preventative and Promotive Health, the budget line that houses AYSRH. It concludes with a call for the Mombasa County Executive Committee Members for Health and Finance and Mombasa County Assembly Health Finance Committees to:

• Increase allocation of health budget funds to the Preventative and Promotive Health program line to at least 5% over time.
• Allocate part of the AYSRH budget specifically to youth-friendly health services.

Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is a core partner on the Population Council’s Evidence to End FGM/C: Research to Help Girls and Women Thrive—a UKAID-funded research consortium to help end female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) within one generation. Our role is to build the consortium’s capacity for research utilization and develop innovative tools and products to improve how researchers communicate their findings about FGM/C to key decision makers.

A new PRB-prepared Evidence Brief, “Understanding Local Variation in How Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting Declines, Changes, or Persists: Analysis of Household Survey Data for Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal,” summarizes the research consortium’s recent findings related to geographic differences in FGM/C trends among girls under age 15.

The researchers used advanced statistical modeling to show that FGM/C prevalence among girls tends to be concentrated in certain subregions and locations in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal—with local social norms driving the practice. Their findings underscore the importance of subnational policies in initiatives to end FGM/C and provide evidence for investing in community-level interventions that promote shifts in social norms, including religious norms.