Authors: Babatunde Odusolu, Omolara Adetukasi, Devyn Lee, Ilana Cohen, Boladale Akin-Kolapo, Benson Ohemu, Babajide Daini, Tomisin Adeoye and Chukwudike Akanegbu
Affiliations: Grassroot Soccer, Inc., DAI and YEDI
Background/Objectives:
The USAID-funded Youth-Powered Ecosystem to Advance Urban Adolescent Health (YPE4AH) project aims to improve the health and well-being of urban, unmarried, out-of-school, adolescents aged 15-19 in Lagos and Kano States by increasing voluntary family planning (FP) uptake and continuation from a holistic, human capital perspective. Centered around Youth Hubs, safe spaces for youth to access contraceptive information and services, YPE4AH also engages youth in sport-based life skills programming, leadership development, and livelihood skill-building opportunities.
Materials & Methods:
SKILLZ United is a 12-session, sport-based intervention delivered by trained young adult 'Coaches.' It uses fun soccer activities, metaphors and easy-to-understand language to convey critical health concepts, including SRHR information and a dedicated session about the importance of using both contraceptives and condoms to prevent pregnancy and STIs.
Results:
SKILLZ United implementation has resulted in the following key lessons for the YPE4AH project consortium:
- In pilot implementation, community sensitization and mobilization were found to be key for scalability, as was revision of Coach contracts to increase remuneration.
- Use of real time, biweekly dashboards for monitoring project achievements has allowed for detection of performance decline and prompt action to address any observed gaps.
- Timely review of strategies to increase participant reach led to 100% achievement of FY22 targets by the end of Q4, compared to 16% reach at the beginning of Q2.
- SKILLZ United participants demonstrated improved self-efficacy to use family planning, evidenced by 23% and 14% increase in pre-post test scores on two items.
Conclusions:
The implementation of the SKILLZ United evidence-based intervention by trained near-peer Coaches has been a key element of the YPE4AH project thus far.
