Girls' Collectives Address Adolescents' Anemia and Social Norms in Socially-excluded Tea Estates in India: A Public-private Partnership in Assam.
Loading...
Date
2015
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Objectives: To generate evidence on engaging girls' collectives to address anemia and social
norms in self-contained, privately-managed tea plantations in India.
Methods: In 2006, UNICEF India partnered with a federation of tea companies in Assam's
Dibrugarh district, and Twinning Corporate Social Responsibility to establish 158 girls' collectives
across 117 of 273 tea gardens. These collectives meet weekly to discuss and address social
issues such as child marriage, child labor, school dropout, and life skills. In 2012, supervised
weekly iron folic acid (IFA) supplementation, biannual deworming and nutrition education were
weaved in these peer interactions and implemented in 15 tea estates through 45 girls' collectives
comprising 7097 adolescent girls, with the objective to address anemia. Visual aids, recipe
demonstrations, and home gardening were used to make sessions interesting. Government positioned adequate supplies at tea estate hospitals/outposts. Two peer monitors per tea estate
supervised the activities of the collectives. The follow up of this cohort included a baseline (2011)
and an end line (2013) survey.
Results: Compliance with weekly IFA supplementation (4 tablets per month) increased from 25%
(2012) to 82% (2013). Home gardens were introduced in 1,002 homes and 55 community patches.
Provisional end line data shows a 1.25 g/dl improvement in mean hemoglobin levels (9.77 to 11.2
g/dl). There is also evidence of increased girls' re-enrollment in high school and a reduction in the
proportion of child marriages.
Conclusions: Lessons from this public-private partnership can be adapted to similar programming
environments that aim at reaching out to adolescent girls with anemia control interventions.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Joshi Vandana, Kulkarni Anirudha, Bhatnagar Neelam, Ghosh Sandip, Dixit Pushpendra Kumar, Gautam Ved Prakash, Mahanta Tulika Goswami, Sethi Vani, Master Jeroo, Aguayo Victor M. Girls' Collectives Address Adolescents' Anemia and Social Norms in Socially-excluded Tea Estates in India: A Public-private Partnership in Assam. European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety. 2015 Special issue; 5(5): 653-654.