Adolescent parents, particularly adolescent girls, are at a disadvantage when it comes to health, both for themselves and their children. Adolescent parenthood places girls at risk for obstetric complications, maternal mortality, perinatal mortality, poor care-seeking during childhood emergencies, poor preventive uptake of things like childhood immunizations, postpartum depression, anxiety disorder, low self-esteem, school dropout, and poor economic achievement.

 

In conjunction with SAFE's partner, the +256 Youth Platform, SAFE seeks to improve adolescent (and especially adolescent mother) uptake of health information and behavior change through hip-hop music, dramatizations, and outreach, through which over 3,000 youth have been taught about reproductive, sexual, maternal. child, and mental health. By participating in the program, youth are instilled not only with knowledge about these topics, but also the confidence that they can understand and address their own health and development issues. They have become good enough to be releasing their own album hopefully this year!

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We are very excited to be scaling up our work with adolescents throughout 2018 - 2019, and look forward to new partnerships to make that work viable.