There is scattered evidence on the effectiveness of social and behaviour change communication interventions for HIV prevention among adolescent girls and young women
Interest in socio-behavioural interventions to support demand and uptake of HIV services is on the rise. Therefore, the evidence of their effectiveness needs to be systematically mapped to enable informed decision-making by sponsors, researchers, policymakers and public health experts.
This evidence and gap map (EGM) presents a consolidated evidence base of existing social and behaviour change communication interventions, and the end-user behaviours they target, in low- and middle-income countries. It looks at a range of strategies including mass media, community-based interventions, interpersonal interventions, and ICT and digital media-based interventions, and identifies gaps in programming.
The interactive evidence and gap map (EGM) is available here.
What is this EGM about?
Adolescent girls and young women around the world face challenges to achieving their sexual and reproductive health rights, including vulnerability to HIV and sexually-transmitted diseases. Evidence-informed interventions for HIV prevention, care and uptake of services targeting girls and women are critical in addressing these challenges.
What is the aim of this evidence and gap map (EGM)?
This EGM identifies, maps and presents all available evidence from systematic reviews and impact evaluations of interventions to strengthen the adoption of HIV prevention measures and participation in research among adolescent girls and young women in low- and middle-income countries.
What studies are included?
The EGM includes 458 studies – 43 systematic reviews and 415 impact evaluations – published in English since 2000.
The evidence is unevenly distributed across intervention and outcome categories. The most common interventions are on interpersonal communication, followed by community-based interventions. Most of these interventions were delivered by healthcare providers and educators.
In terms of geography, most of the identified research concentrates on Sub-Saharan Africa.
What are the main findings of this EGM?
The included studies mainly focus on enhancing knowledge-related capabilities to create behavioural and health impacts. There is a need for more studies to focus on interventions that help achieve envisioned behavioural and health outcomes.
Few studies explore the effectiveness of these interventions across diverse groups – such as pregnant women and new mothers, sex workers and people living with HIV. This scarcity of research leads to a limited understanding of the use of these interventions across critical sub-populations and multiple user segments.
Given the value of communication channels in shaping behaviour change discourse, this EGM looks at evidence across different communication strategies and platforms. However, we found little evidence on the use of digital media tools such as social media and mobile-based services.
There are also relatively few studies on the use of popular culture tools – including mass-media, theatre and other arts-based approaches.
What do the findings of this EGM mean?
The EGM underscores the need for better quality evidence to understand what interventions work, for whom, and towards what outcome.
How up-to-date is this EGM?
The authors searched for studies published up to April 2021.