Category Adolescents 360 | PSI Impact | Global health news and commentary brought to you by PSI

Sparking a Human-Centered Revolution

Adolescents 360 is igniting change, placing the girls the project serves at the center of the solutions A360 creates

Every revolution begins with a spark. Adolescents 360 (A360) is transforming how adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) services are designed for, with and by adolescent girls. Through a Human Centered Design (HCD) approach, A360 operates in partnership with young people to reframe how girls aged 15-19 access contraceptives across developing countries. It’s

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Human Centered Design Inspires Innovation… and Trust

The framework is the basis for how A360 designs and collaborates with and for adolescent girls

By: Emma Beck, Associate Communications Manager, PSI As Shahada Kinyaga, PSI Tanzania’s Adolescents 360 (A360) lead, notes: A360 is anything but traditional. Launched in 2016, A360 is revolutionizing how reproductive health services are conceived and delivered by and for adolescent girls across developing countries. Through a Human Centered Design (HCD) approach, A360 sources from deep

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The Stairway to Internalization

A visual framework to digest the process of change

By Emma Beck, Associate Communications Manager, PSI Adolescents 360’s (A360) Project Director Manya Dotson plastered an oversized sticky-note on the side wall of the team’s retreat space. Her hands danced as she brushed pen to paper: drawing a curve to explain how people internalize new information. Manya is leading A360’s weeklong retreat, equipping the team

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Harnessing the Power of Youth to Reach our FP2020 Pledge

Ambitious goals require innovative approaches

By: Amy Uccello, Sr. AYSRH Technical Advisor, PSI A young leader once told me: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Herein lies the root of positive youth development (PYD), an evidence-based approach that informs PSI’s youth programming across health settings. It’s a framework that equips adolescents with the skills, assets and

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Four Big Insights from HCD Exchange

By Manya Dotson, Project Director, Adolescents 360 In no uncertain terms, Human Centered Design (HCD) is revolutionizing Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health (AYSRH). That was my takeaway from the HCD Exchange—a weeklong summit in Tanzania that convened some of our community’s leading innovators to collectively process what we are learning, what we still

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This Mom Outsourced the ‘Sex’ Talk: Here’s What Happened

Doreen’s mom didn’t tell her why she was handing her an invitation a few days earlier. It caught the teen’s attention though: It was yellow with a bright green pineapple printed on it. Doreen’s mom Alice had visited the clinic on Tuesday — along with 20 other mothers. Alice heard that she could invite Doreen

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Why Do Teenage Girls Trust Maria?

She was 13 when she came to the clinic to meet Maria, a PSI-trained health provider. She whispered to Maria, “I need a test.” Maria remembers it vividly. The teenage girl was crying. She had heard about Maria through PSI’s Kuwa Mjanja program, which focuses on preventing unplanned teen pregnancy by creating programs with direct

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Anthropology + Public Health = Culturally-appropriate Solutions

By Courtney Helfrecht, Anthropologist, Adolescents 360 We all recognize that no one lives in a vacuum, but we don’t often notice that our decisions are thoroughly enmeshed in cultural norms and ways of thinking. Culture plays a key role in health behaviors and decision-making, ranging from something as minor as how to treat a cold

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What a Difference Development Makes…

By Ahna Suleiman, Coordinating Director for the Center on the Developing Adolescent In 2016, PSI invited the Center on the Developing Adolescent to join Adolescents 360 (A360) saying: We’re working on developing a concept for a large-scale program to expand reproductive health services for adolescents in several places in sub-Saharan Africa. We’re looking to incorporate

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What Do Adolescent Girls Think About Contraceptives?

The piece below originally appeared on the A360 Learning Hub. Do I fit in? Does that boy like me? Am I in trouble with my parents? How do I achieve my dreams? What do my friends think of me? How does the future compare to what’s happening right now? Adolescent girls everywhere have a lot

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Insight & Empathy

by Manya Dotson, Project Director, Adolescents 360, PSI The piece below originally appeared on the A360 Learning Hub. In 2016, A360’s public health professionals, professional designers, young people, an anthropologist, and a developmental scientist had deep conversations with girls all over Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. It was formative research, but in line with the human-centered

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Can Deep Insight Lead to More Effective Action?

by Manya Dotson, Project Director, Adolescents 360, PSI The piece below originally appeared on the A360 learning hub. For decades, public health professionals (myself included) have been trying to unlock the persistent challenge of connecting adolescent girls with sexual and reproductive health services. We want to ensure they have the choice to have a safe