BRICK BY BRICK TO LAUNCH NEW COMPREHENSIVE ADOLESCENT HEALTH PROGRAM

Brick by Brick’s My Pads Program is an innovative nine session after school program that empowers girls with knowledge and life skills in sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Since 2012, over 5000 students have participated in this program across Uganda. From 2017-2019, My Pads was funded through the US State Department’ DREAMS Program, which worked in ten sub-Saharan African countries to dramatically reduce new HIV infections amongst adolescent girls and young women. In addition to SRH education, over 3000 students were taught to fabricate their own set of reusable menstrual pads, addressing a major cause of absenteeism and school dropout. We also built rain water harvesting systems and new gender-sensitive changing rooms to support menstrual health and hygiene in sixteen secondary schools, serving over 8000 students.

Upon the successful conclusion of our My Pads/Dreams funding, we saw the need to expand and deepen this program, so that are addressing the health needs of adolescents in a more comprehensive fashion. We spent 2019 thoroughly reviewing the lessons learned and especially the shortcomings of the My Pads Program over the past seven years. We met with students, teachers, and local government leaders to obtain their input as well. We are committed to programs that respect the cultures of the communities we serve. In Uganda, where faith traditions are strong, great sensitivity is required to ensure comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education. Despite the best of intentions, abstinent-only approaches have been shown in research study after study to fail to prevent adolescent pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease, so a comprehensive approach is critical to empowering these young women.

In 2020, we will launch our expanded My Pads Program. Our program model utilizes a three tiered approach focusing on primary schools, the surrounding communities and the provision of quality adolescent health care delivery at the health center level. Here is a summary of our approach:

• In response to a request from district education leadership, we will focus this next phase of the My Pads Program at the upper primary school level. We have selected eight free Universal Primary Education Schools where we will enroll 600 adolescents aged 10-19, 400 girls and 200 boys in our nine session after school program.

• We will also target out of school adolescent girls and young women who are especially vulnerable to pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted disease, as well as sexual and gender-based violence. Additionally, we will engage young men as well as family members in our health education activities.

• Finally, we will expand on our established adolescent-friendly reproductive health care services to include three additional health centers. We will train local nurses and midwives to provide high quality care that is sensitive to the special needs of our young people. Our school and community-based programs will link adolescents to these services ensuring that they receive the full spectrum of preventative and treatment services.

Our new comprehensive My Pads Program, we will follow key indicators to ensure the quality of our program intervention. We will closely monitor adolescent pregnancy rates, SRH knowledge and attitudes, as well as utilization of our adolescent-friendly health services.