Evidence - SBC Impact
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Evidence - SBC Impact
After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future.
 
Co-founder Victoria Martin is pleased to see this work continue under Wits' leadership. Victoria knows that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction.
 
We honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades. Meanwhile, La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA) continues independently at cila.comminitcila.com and is linked with The CI Global site.
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A quasi-experimental evaluation of an HIV prevention programme by peer education in the Anglican Church of the Western Cape, South Africa

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Mash, R. and R. J. Mash (2012). "A quasi-experimental evaluation of an HIV prevention programme by peer education in the Anglican Church of the Western Cape, South Africa." BMJ Open 2(2).

Introduction: Religion is important in most African communities, but faith-based HIV prevention programmes are infrequent and very rarely evaluated.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a church-based peer education HIV prevention programme that focused on youth.

Design: A quasi-experimental study design compared non-randomly chosen intervention and control groups.

Setting: This study was conducted in the Cape Town Diocese of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

Participants: The intervention group of 176 teenagers was selected from youth groups at 14 churches and the control group of 92 from youth groups at 17 churches. Intervention and control churches were chosen to be as similar as possible to decrease confounding.

Intervention: The intervention was a 20-session peer education programme (Fikelela: Agents of Change) aimed at changing risky sexual behaviour among youth (aged 12-19 years). Three workshops were also held with parents.

Primary and secondary outcome measures: The main outcome measures were changes in age of sexual debut, secondary abstinence, condom use and numbers of partners.

Results: The programme was successful at increasing condom usage (condom use score 3.5 vs 2.1; p=0.02), OR 6.7 (95% CI 1.1 to 40.7), and postponing sexual debut (11.9% vs 21.4%; p=0.04) absolute difference 9.5%. There was no difference in secondary abstinence (14.6% vs 12.5%; p=0.25) or with the number of partners (mean 1.7 vs 1.4; p=0.67) and OR 2.2 (95% CI 0.7 to 7.4).

Conclusion: An initial exploratory quasi-experimental evaluation of the Agents of Change peer education programme in a church-based context found that the age of sexual debut and condom usage was significantly increased. The study demonstrated the potential of faith-based peer education among youth to make a contribution to HIV prevention in Africa. Further evaluation of the effectiveness of the programme is, however, required before widespread implementation can be recommended.

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A common challenge from policy makers, funders, community members, people directly experiencing development issues, and governments is: Demonstrate your Impact. Prove that what you are doing works. The high quality, highly credible data presented on the cards below is designed to help you answer that question for your social change, behaviour change, community engagement, communication and media for development, strategy formulation, policy engagement and funding initiatives. At this link filter the research data to your specific interests and priorities

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There is a physical pack of cards with this data (to get a copy please request through the comment form for any card). The card approach allows for easy identification and selection of relevant direct impact data in any context. For example if talking with a donor and you need to identify proof of impact say "take a look at the 7 of Hearts". Quick access can be provided to high-quality data for many areas of your work – funding, planning, policy, advocacy, community dialogue, training, partner engagement, and more. A card deck is also engaging, easy to use and share, a conversation starter, and a resource - and they are fun and different. So we kept that design for the online images as it can serve similar purposes. 

What are the criteria for inclusion?

The impact data presented meets the following high standard for inclusion criteria:

  • Positive change or trend in a priority development issue;
  • Social change or behaviour change strategy or process;
  • Randomized Control Trial or Systematic Review methodology;
  • High quality peer review journal published;
  • Numeric impact data point
  • Published since 2010.