Journal article
Improving educational and reproductive outcomes for adolescent mothers in South Africa: a cross-sectional analysis towards realizing policy goals
- Abstract:
- Adolescent mothers face numerous challenges. This study aimed to address the operationalisation of the new South African national policy for young mothers by testing the associations of potential protective provisions with three policy goals: School return, grade promotion, and pregnancy/HIV prevention. Adolescent mothers aged 12–24 from rural and urban communities of South Africa’s Eastern Cape completed study questionnaires between 2017–2019. Using multivariate multi-level analysis, we simultaneously estimated associations between hypothesized provisions and protective variables and all policy-aligned goals. School return was associated with using formal childcare services, higher confidence and self-efficacy scores, and remaining in school throughout pregnancy. Grade promotion was associated with greater exposure to friendly and respectful health staff, using formal childcare services, higher confidence and self-efficacy scores, and remaining in school throughout pregnancy. Pregnancy/HIV prevention (condom use) was moderately associated with greater exposure to friendly and respectful health staff. There was evidence of synergies of provisions whereby a combination of protective characteristics showed larger positive effects than receipt of any single factor alone. This study provides essential evidence for operationalising South Africa’s new policy on the Prevention and Management of Learner Pregnancy in Schools, and points to implementation strategies that provide low-cost opportunities to promote educational and health outcomes for adolescent mothers.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/17441692.2023.2206465
Authors
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Journal:
- Global Public Health More from this journal
- Volume:
- 18
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 2206465
- Publication date:
- 2023-05-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-04-19
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1744-1706
- ISSN:
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1744-1692
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1337977
- Local pid:
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pubs:1337977
- Deposit date:
-
2023-04-20
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jochim et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which thisarticle has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
- Notes:
- This research was funded in whole or in part by the Medical Research Council. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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