Participatory evidence generation with a focus on young people

This multi-country initiative in Kenya and Senegal employed a participatory, youth-centered co-design and user testing approach with youth and experts to develop generative AI-powered chatbots to empower youth in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and family planning (FP) decision-making. Co-designing with youth revealed ways to improve design elements important to the youth such as authentic chatbot personas, message length, accuracy in local languages, culturally relevant content and chat privacy. These findings highlight the critical role of youth-led insights in enhancing the ethical, cultural, and practical relevance of AI-enabled SRH-FP tools and demonstrate a generalizable model for equitable AI chatbot design and deployment in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts.

The Global Listening Project (GLP), in partnership with the Christian Health Association of Nigeria (CHAN), Yemaya Health Advisory, and faith organizations in Kenya and Nigeria, advances social and behavior change communication (SBCC) through systematic integration of faith leader perspectives into public health policy. Faith leaders as trusted intermediaries shaping health attitudes on sensitive issues, project prioritized participatory co-creation over conventional top-down messaging.
Focusing on early marriage, contraception, and HPV vaccination, the project employed a multi-layered methodology (April-June 2025) engaged over 1,100 participants, including 700+ faith leaders and community members. In Nigeria, data collection spanned nine states with 48 focus group discussions, 64 key informant interviews (39 in-person, 25 avatar-assisted), and WhatsApp surveys reaching 4,669 respondents. In Kenya, 425 participants engaged through 35 focus group discussions, 78 key informant interviews (11 in-person, 67 avatar-assisted), and WhatsApp surveys reaching 3,817 respondents. Methods included media monitoring, scoping reviews, and digital surveys analyzed through framework analysis and AI-assisted validation.
Findings revealed transformative potential: faith leaders shifted from HPV vaccine skepticism to advocacy when reframed as "cervical cancer prevention"; contraception acceptance increased when positioned as "family spacing" for maternal health. Novel insights included multi-level trust deficits across health system actors, faith leaders functioning as "therapeutic navigators" bridging biomedical and spiritual care, and digital platforms enabling wider health messaging.
This culminated in evidence-based, country-specific Faith Leaders' Engagement Toolkits validated through multi-stakeholder workshops, demonstrating that sustainable health progress requires partnerships bridging biomedical expertise with community belief systems.

Despite investments in sexual and reproductive health and rights programming, adolescent girls in Nampula, Mozambique continue to face unintended pregnancy, early marriage, low contraceptive use, early sexual debut, and high risks of HIV and gender-based violence. Harmful gender norms limit their agency, and family and community support remains weak. Traditional SBCC approaches often treat youth as passive respondents engaging them through surveys or for pilot testing materials designed far from their lived realities. These top-down methods frequently fail to resonate with youth or reflect their needs. This session shares how we applied a youth-led, iterative SBCC process using Human-Centered Design in Nampula. Youth were engaged from the start to define success, identify barriers, and co-create solutions. A gender equality and inclusion assessment and six co-design workshops informed the development of prototype ideas. Brainstorming sessions with youth designers shaped the prototypes for testing. Low-fidelity prototyping fostered a culture of experimentation, allowing youth to learn from mistakes, adapt and improve ideas quickly, to build relevant interventions. In line with the Summit's theme on Knowledge and Evidence, youth not only provided data, but also generated insights. This shift from extractive research to co-owned learning makes SBCC more ethical, inclusive, and impactful. It shifts power to youth, improves intervention design and leads to local ownership and sustainability. We advocate for broader adoption of youth-led iterative design as a scalable model for responsive, community-rooted SBCC, particularly when youth voices are overlooked.

Bangladesh continues to experience high rates of adolescent fertility. Very young adolescents (VYAs, ages 10–14) face heightened risks yet remain largely invisible in SRH programming. Evidence on how SBC initiatives meaningfully engage this  group is limited, and existing knowledge often privileges programmatic documentation over lived experience. To address this gap and give visibility to alternative forms of evidence, USAID's Agency for All project conducted a national, mixed-methods review to understand the context and drivers of early childbearing; examine how SBC programs engage VYAs; and identify opportunities to strengthen programming through participatory, community-validated insights.
The review combined literature synthesis, key informant interviews, mapping of implementing organizations, participatory consultations with VYAs and influential adults across eight divisions, and multi-stakeholder Solutions Workshops to co-interpret findings and shape recommendations. This approach elevated community-generated knowledge, particularly from adolescents, families, and marginalized groups, alongside formal evidence.
Findings show that drivers of early childbearing include entrenched social norms, child marriage, limited SRH access, and constrained educational or livelihood pathways, intersecting with climate and humanitarian stressors that exacerbate risk. SBC programs seldom target VYAs directly, rarely apply age-specific theory, and often overlook vulnerable communities. Effective programs were multi-level, gender-transformative, and worked across the levels of adolescents' social environments.
The study demonstrates how participatory evidence deepens understanding of VYA needs and reveals design gaps not captured in existing documentation. Recommendations call for investment in age-specific approaches, stronger use of social norms theory, adolescent leadership, systems coordination, and innovation responsive to Bangladesh's shifting contexts.