Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Layla, Layla, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Layla left Ethiopia 10 years ago to look for work opportunities. She left behind a father and three brothers. She went to Syria on a three-year work contract. She worked in a house and learned Arabic. She then went to Turkey by boat and then went on to Greece for 5 years. She worked and learned the Greek language. When she became pregnant she had to stop working. She travelled to Serbia to Macedonia to Austria all on foot. Then the Red Cross moved Layla and her daughter to Giessen, Germany where a roommate periodically beat her baby. Seeking safety …

The Lipstick Project, The University Of Maine Honors College

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Leigh Boyle will share her story of The Lipstick Project, which grew out of her 2010 volunteer work in a women's hospital in Northern Ethiopia. The hospital cares for women with obstetric fistula, a condition resulting from prolonged, obstructed labor that leaves women chronically incontinent and ostracized. Leigh began giving weekly manicures to the isolated women, an act that proved life-giving for all. Upon returning home to Vancouver, Leigh saw similar need for restorative work in modern healthcare and established The Lipstick Project, a woman run volunteer organization that provides free, professional spa treatments to people in hospice and hospitals …

Using Data To Target And Scale-Up Girls' Support Programs And Child Marriage Prevention, The Evidence Project

Reproductive Health

Though child marriage is declining globally, it is estimated that over 100 million girls under age 18 will be married in the next decade. A 2012 review of child marriage interventions in developing countries found that the most effective approaches in delaying child marriage were those that offered incentives, such as conditional cash transfers or provision of school materials, and those that empower girls directly through interventions such as girls’ groups and training. The Berhane Hewan program in Ethiopia (meaning ‘Light for Eve’ in Amharic) was one of the earliest to test child marriage prevention interventions in sub-Saharan Africa. The …

The Journey Of Out-Of-School Girls In Ethiopia: Examining Migration, Livelihoods, And Hiv, Annabel Erulkar, Girmay Medhin, Lemi Negeri

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Rates of urbanization in Ethiopia are increasing, and based on available data, HIV prevalence among urban girls who are in-migrants is significantly higher than among girls who are native to the area. Likewise, a significant number of out-of-school girls who migrate end up in low-status, exploitative, or risky professions, such as domestic work and sex work. This study of out-of-school girls in six regions of Ethiopia aimed to explore patterns of migration, transitions into different work roles, and situations that may put out-of-school migrant girls at increased risk of HIV infection or be protective and beneficial. Based on the study’s …

The Impact And Cost Of Child Marriage Prevention In Three African Settings—Brief, Population Council

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Child marriage affects a significant number of girls in developing countries. The negative consequences of the practice are numerous and powerful, spanning health, welfare, development, and demographic domains. Yet there is limited evidence on what works to delay child marriage in different cultural contexts and even less information on programmatic cost. This brief reports on a study that aims to identify the most effective and minimum basic package approaches to delay marriage among adolescent girls in different African settings. The study was undertaken in rural areas of Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. The study also measures the cost of implementing …

Understanding Adolescent And Youth Sexual And Reproductive Health-Seeking Behaviors In Ethiopia: Implications For Youth Friendly Service Programming, Aparna Jain, Hussein Ismail, Elizabeth Tobey, Annabel Erulkar

Reproductive Health

To meet the unique sexual and reproductive health needs of its large adolescent and youth population, Ethiopia’s government has expanded and institutionalized youth-friendly services (YFS) at all levels of the health system. To help inform and improve these efforts, the Evidence Project, in collaboration with USAID/Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health, conducted a study on adolescents’ and young people’s use of and opinions on YFS. Results showed that young people were satisfied overall with the health services they received, regardless of whether it was basic health services or YFS. Awareness and use of YFS was low, but many …

The Impact And Cost Of Child Marriage Prevention In Three African Settings, Annabel Erulkar, Girmay Medhin, Eva Weissman

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Girls in sub-Saharan Africa are disproportionately affected by child marriage; by 2050, half of the girls married during childhood will reside in Africa. The negative consequences of the practice are numerous and powerful, spanning health, welfare, development, and demographic domains. Yet, there is limited evidence on what works to delay child marriage in different cultural contexts and even less information on programmatic cost. This study develops and tests the most effective and minimum basic package approaches to delay marriage among older and younger adolescent girls, and estimates the cost and cost-effectiveness of implementing the different approaches, in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, …

The Impact And Cost Of Child Marriage Prevention In Rural Ethiopia, Annabel Erulkar, Girmay Medhin, Eva Weissman

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

The negative impact of child marriage, frequently prevalent in rural locations of poor countries, spans health, development, and demographic consequences. While evidence is limited, a systematic review of child marriage interventions in developing countries found that the most effective approaches in delaying child marriage were those that empower girls by offering incentives such as conditional cash transfers. However, most impact evaluations of community-based programs lack rigorous costing data, a particular weakness of cash transfer schemes where programmatic cost would affect the ability to scale up successful interventions for large populations. To address the limited information on cost and scalability of …

Married Young Women And Girls' Family Planning And Maternal Heath Preferences And Use In Ethiopia, Aparna Jain, Elizabeth Tobey, Hussein Ismail, Annabel Erulkar

Reproductive Health

Married young women and girls are the primary users of youth-centered sexual and reproductive health services in Ethiopia and, given the health risks associated with early and closely-spaced pregnancies, represent an especially important population to reach with sexual and reproductive health services. This brief looks specifically at the needs and preferences for family planning and reproductive health services among married young women and girls, with recommendations for how to more effectively ensure that they have access to those services.

Multilevel And Multisectoral Processes Of Implementing Nutritionsensitive Ideology And Programming In Ethiopia’S Development Landscape, Andrea Marie Warren

Theses and Dissertations

This research sought to understand the ways in which ideas and discourses in international development are adapted in a country context. Our particular focus was on how ideas at the international and national level become reality at the subnational and community levels. We primarily examined the sensitization of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program to nutrition across sectors and down levels of government as a way to understand how the global momentum around nutrition, particularly multisectoral or nutrition-sensitive initiatives, can be translated into action.

The first manuscript delves further into the operational realities of implementing multisectoral nutrition-sensitive programming among the neglected …