SI-Enhancing the Reproductive Autonomy of Girls in Uganda (ERAGU)

UG2023SIN402B125 01/09/2023 - 31/08/2025 A high proportion of adolescent girls in Sub-Saharan Africa face Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) challenges including HIV and AIDS, early marriages, teenage pregnancies, and early childbirth. These contribute to poor health and school dropouts, impacting negatively on the social positioning of women in Uganda. To navigate adolescence and its associated SRH-challenges, adolescent girls’ Reproductive Autonomy (RA) is key. As RA is strongly influenced by policy frameworks and contextual support, current trends in girls’ SRH render it imperative to invigorate these top-down and bottom-up enabling processes. In this project, we aim to strengthen the capacity of Mountains of the Moon University’s (MMU) department of Nursing and Midwifery staff and their partners to be drivers of change in adolescent girls’ SRH through invigorating the contextual scaffolding of their RA. This will be achieved through: 1) policy analysis and community-based research to study barriers and facilitators of RA and the context in which SRH services are offered to adolescent girls, 2) cultivating multi-stakeholder collaboration to establish a learning network that analyses the current challenges and supports to girls’ RA as well as identifies pathways on how both policy and community support for girls’ RA could be improved, and 3) disseminating acquired knowledge, first to staff at MMU’s department of Nursing and Midwifery, who are expected to integrate the knowledge in their teaching activities, and to policy makers and practitioners who can take this knowledge forward. The planned activities will culminate into curriculum content, conference presentations, peer-reviewed journal articles, short infotainment videos, and a policy guidance note.