Skip to main content

The HERStory Series: Safe Spaces for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) as part of combination HIV prevention programmes in South Africa: how accessible, feasible and acceptable are they?

HERStory Series

The HERStory Series: Safe Spaces for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) as part of combination HIV prevention programmes in South Africa: how accessible, feasible and acceptable are they?

Summary

  • Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) often experience services provided in health facilities as unfriendly and unresponsive to their needs, and this is especially the case for HIV sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care, where they have substantial unmet needs.
  • Hundreds of Safe Spaces have been set up in sub-Saharan Africa including South Africa to provide HIV, SRH and social protection services to AGYW, especially those who are more vulnerable, and to overcome the barriers that limit access to HIV and SRH care.
  • Based on a survey among AGYW and interviews with key stakeholders including implementers, our study provides evidence that when Safe Spaces are resourced to promote AGYW’s socio-economic goals (such as employment and educational progress) and to meet AGYW’s needs for social interaction and peer engagement, AGYW are attracted to Safe Spaces, and many will take up the HIV and SRH services on offer.
  • Safe Spaces can thus create an enabling environment for the synergistic preventive action of biomedical, behavioural and structural interventions.
  • However, implementation strategies should ensure that the most vulnerable AGYW have access to Safe Spaces.
  • A cost analysis should guide decisions about the resources required for establishing or possibly building the physical spaces, and for providing the structural, behavioural and biomedical interventions, and should inform future budgets for combination HIV prevention intervention delivery though Safe Spaces.

View the complete Research Brief: Safe Spaces for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) as part of combination HIV prevention programmes in South Africa: how accessible, feasible and acceptable are they?

The South African Medical Research Council’s strategic plan includes the generation of new knowledge and its translation into policy and practice. In the Health Systems Research Unit, our research aims to inform and support decision-making in health and social policy to strengthen health systems, and therefore improve the health of South Africans. We evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of care delivery models in communities, schools, and health facilities. To ensure relevance of our research, we apply implementation science principles and approaches, and engage and partner with Departments of Health at all levels of government, as well as with communities and other stakeholders. 

As a unit, we are developing research briefs based on manuscripts that have been published. Our intention is to disseminate key research findings to a broad audience, sharing the research briefs on multiple platforms to ensure wide reach, and work towards bridging the divide between academic research and the development of policy and practice. We aim to use these research briefs as a tool to summarise the key findings of recent studies, outline the implications for policy and practice in the South African context, and provide empirically based, practical, actionable information for policy makers, programme designers and implementers, practitioners, citizens and communities.

 

27 July 2022