HEY BABY: Helping Empower Youth Brought up in Adversity with their Babies and Young children
Principal investigator: Professor Lucie Cluver / Dr Elona Toska
Funded by: Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) through its National Institutes of Health Research (NIHR), European Research Council (ERC), UKRI GCRF Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents (Accelerate) Hub, Research England (UKRI), UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Office (UNICEF-ESARO), the International AIDS Society’s Collaborative Initiative for Paediatric HIV Education and Research (CIPHER), and HelpAge.
Start date: July 2017
End date: July 2024
Project outline
The HEY BABY study aimed to assess resilience-promoting pathways for adolescent parent families living in adversity, including young parents living in resource-constrained, HIV-affected communities. It asked two groups of research questions: What puts adolescent parents and their children at risk of disadvantage? What services can help adolescent parents and their children? This research guides policy and programming in HIV and adolescent health.
This study utilised a mixed methodology to capture the complexity of resilience combining adolescent parent and child data. It utilised two research streams conducted concurrently: qualitative and quantitative. The HEY BABY cohort of over 1,000 parent-child dyads living in severe adversity in South Africa is nested within a larger longitudinal observational cohort study, Mzantsi Wakho - the world's largest longitudinal cohort of adolescents living with HIV.
The HEY BABY study was designed and conceptualised in collaboration with South African Departments of Health, Basic Education, and Social Development, UNICEF and UNFPA, the World Health Organisation, REPSSI, Paediatric AIDS Treatment for Africa, and community-based organisations: the Keiskamma Trust, Kheth'Impilo, Beyond Zero, the Relevance Network and Small Projects Foundation.
To find out more visit the Hey Baby project website