Lisa Butler of the University of Connecticut in the U.S. will develop an approach to improve the mental health of pregnant and new mothers between 15 and 19 years old in Botswana that incorporates interactive group sessions mediated by trained community workers, informative text messages, and an SMS-based mental health screening tool. Between 19-25% of women in low- to middle-income countries suffer from depression during pregnancy, which can also have serious effects on the child. In Botswana, there are large numbers of young, single mothers, who lack support and are particularly vulnerable to depression. They will develop the materials and format for their approach with support from a community working group of adolescent mothers and health providers to ensure it is culturally appropriate and addresses their specific needs. They will also incorporate a theoretical model designed to address the triggers and reduce the stigma of mental health disorders. Their approach will be field tested with 80 pregnant adolescents in a traditional village in Botswana to evaluate its feasibility and acceptability.

Tara Hopkins of Mali Health in the U.S. will develop methods to improve vaccination coverage in rural communities in southern Mali by engaging community health workers together with traditional birth attendants who are present during home births. In southern Mali, particularly in rural communities, most children are born at home, so they are not registered with a health clinic or present for critical childhood vaccinations. Local health services have limited funds and resources to manage the health records of all the babies born in their communities, or to follow-up with families regarding the necessary vaccinations. This translates to low vaccine coverage of around 9% in some regions, and increased incidences of deadly infectious diseases. They will pilot the project in three rural health districts and create a quality improvement team in each, consisting of a coach, local health workers, birth attendants, and mothers. The teams will be given tools to engage in a group effort to identify the barriers to timely vaccinations, and generate solutions to test.

Rebecca Dempster of HIAS in the U.S. will develop an online game- and mentorship-based intervention to improve the mental health of refugee adolescent mothers in Kenya that integrates into their daily lives and helps them develop new skills. Digital games can help treat mental health disorders such as depression particularly in young people because they have a natural appeal and are easy to access from home. They will recruit ten young mothers, a psychologist, and software programmers to design a mental health game so that it can be used to identify those with mental health disorders and connect them with counselors, and provides interactive challenges to help treat and protect against those disorders as well as build relevant life skills. They will then train these young mothers to act as mentors to support the online game, and pilot test their approach on a sample of 15 refugee adolescent mothers over three months to evaluate feasibility, acceptability, and effect on maternal depression.

Chiwoneso Tinago of West Chester University of Pennsylvania in the U.S. will partner with adolescent mothers and local health workers in Zimbabwe to create peer-support groups incorporating cellphone-based technology such as the WhatsApp messenger application to provide coping and parenting skills to improve the mental health of young mothers. Young mothers less than 18 years old in Zimbabwe are often socially isolated due to forced marriages and exclusion from school, and therefore have no help when bringing up their children. This leaves them vulnerable to physical, emotional, and mental health problems, which also harms their children. They will hold one-hour focus groups with around 100 adolescent mothers and other community members including health workers and teachers, to identify the important topics and the best set-up for the support group meetings. They will then train community health workers and educators to run the peer-support groups, and evaluate its effect on depression and anxiety.