Follow-up Reflections on the Adolescent Reproductive Health and Life Skills Toolkit

Description

Connecting health and education: sustaining adolescent reproductive health and life-skills education in Uganda

In July 2026, I co-convened a research-impact and stakeholder workshop in Arua, Uganda, bringing together teachers from seven secondary schools that participated in our 2022–2023 Grand Challenges Canada-funded Adolescent Reproductive Health and Life Skills Education project. I had co-led the original project, which worked with approximately 400 students and their teachers to co-design a culturally and contextually relevant multimedia toolkit addressing adolescent reproductive health, relationships and life skills. The work sits at an important intersection between SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG 4 (Quality Education), recognising schools not simply as places of learning but as important settings in which young people's health knowledge, capabilities, confidence and future opportunities can be shaped.

The July workshop provided an opportunity to understand what had happened after the funded project ended. Teachers reported that the toolkit had continued to be used and, importantly, had been adapted in ways we had not originally anticipated. Beyond health clubs, teachers described using its stories and activities in English-language teaching, Christian Religious Education, guidance and counselling, and peer-to-peer student support. They reported perceived improvements in students' confidence, communication, willingness to take leadership roles and behaviour, while one school also reported reductions in teenage pregnancy.

Teachers also identified barriers to sustained implementation, including the limited number of physical toolkits available to each school, inadequate computer facilities, differences in teachers' digital skills, and competing demands on school timetables.

The workshop generated recommendations that are now informing the next phase of our research. These included strengthening the involvement of boys; extending access to adolescents outside formal educational settings; engaging parents and community, cultural and religious leaders; developing multilingual, audio and visual formats; strengthening teacher support; and promoting greater whole-school integration.

The workshop was particularly timely because the toolkit has, as of July 2026, received approval from Uganda's National Curriculum Development Centre as a resource for secondary learners. The emerging evidence is now informing our work on how an intervention developed collaboratively with young people and teachers might move from local use towards equitable and sustainable national scale-up, while remaining sensitive to linguistic, socioeconomic, geographical and educational inequalities.

More broadly, the experience is raising important questions for our continuing research about the relationship between health and education outcomes. Rather than treating better health as simply an outcome of education or education as merely a convenient setting for health interventions, I am interested in understanding how improvements in young people's health capabilities and educational experiences may interact with and reinforce one another over time.

Period	30 Jul 2026
Event type	Workshop
Location	Arua City, UgandaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International