Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health:Report on an Assessment and Review of Training Materials

Young people in Tanzania face a range of serious reproductive health risks – from early unwanted pregnancy and unsafe abortion to sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS. These reproductive health problems do not only have an immediate impact on the lives and well being of young people, but also contribute to long-term pattern of high fertility, poverty, dependency and poor socio-economic development. In recognition of the extent of adolescent health problems, the Government of Tanzania has initiated an effort to address young people’s needs for reproductive health information, counseling and services. To guide improved adolescent sexual and reproductive health programming, the Reproductive and Child Health Section (RCHS) of the Ministry of Health, with technical assistance from Family Care International (FCI) and financial assistance from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), launched an effort to assess and review training curricula and related resource materials that are available in Ta nzania and internationally. Specific objectives of the Assessment were: To provide an overview of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) training curricula that is available in Tanzania and at the international level. To identify priorities for curriculum development in Tanzania. To recommend training materials that could be used as models for developing national training curricula for various target audiences. Through interviews with key ASRH stakeholders in Tanzania and literature reviews, a \ud range of training materials were identified and reviewed. Materials were analyzed by target user and audience as well as by content and depth of coverage. The Assessment and Review served to illuminate critical ASRH issues that need to be addressed through training programmes for those working with youth. In addition, the Assessment highlighted key gaps in available curricula. Based on the Assessment findings, priorities for curriculum development include. An in-service training curriculum for orienting health service providers. The Assessment revealed that there are few materials for orienting service providers to youth friendly service delivery. Therefore, a standardized curriculum is needed to guide in-service training of facility-based health staff, as well as school-based health workers, outreach workers, lay counselors and other community-based providers in adolescent sexual and reproductive health counseling and service delivery. A comprehensive peer education training manual. Many organizations working with peer educators have developed training curricula, and there is considerable variety in the content and quality of these resources. To ensure the content and quality of peer education programmes for youth, it is recommended that a comprehensive peer education manual be developed, which could be used for training various types of peer educators and youth counselors (i.e. those working with in-school adolescents, those working with out-of-school adolescents, etc). Curricula and teaching aids for primary and secondary schools. Although the Ministry of Education and Culture has begun developing syllabi to guide implementation of the Family Life Education Programme in primary and secondary schools, teachers need more detailed curricula, reference materials and teaching aids to successfully carry out this important education programme. In developing the above curricula, it is recommended that special emphasis be placed on designing training resources comprised of separate training modules – modules that can be used either separately or together, depending on the specific training needs of various audiences. For example, the curriculum for service providers should include separate modules on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, information and counseling, and service provision to young people. While all tree modules would be used in training service providers, select modules could be used to train lay counselors and outreach workers. Similarly, the comprehensive training manual for peer educators should include separate modules on topics, such as adolescent sexual and reproductive health, facilitation and peer education skills, and working with different target audiences – in school adolescents, out-of-school youth, and parents and other adults – to ensure that peer education programmes could use the specific modules that are appropriate to their outreach efforts.The Assessment revealed that a large number of training curricula and related materials exist to support adolescent sexual and reproductive health initiatives in Tanzania. Although none of these resources is precisely suited to meet the above-mentioned gaps,many of the existing materials contain excellent content, which should be used as the basis for developing standardized national curricula

Tanzania Country Climate Risk Profile Series. Iringa District

Climate change is a major challenge facing the agriculture sector in Tanzania. The impacts of climate change on agriculture have been documented in several government reports, projects, and policies (URT, 2017, 2013, 2014, 2015; URT, 2007). Small-scale farmers are the most affected; their livelihoods are primarily agriculture-based, with relatively low adaptive capacity. Historical climate information shows that temperatures have significantly increased in recent years, while precipitation has remarkably decreased (URT, 2014). Associated effects of these changes include geographic shifts of agro-ecological zones (AEZs), rainfall variability, prolonged dry spells, and reduction of water volumes in rivers, lakes, and other water bodies. Climate projections indicate that the adverse effects of climate change are expected to increase in magnitude in the coming years. Temperatures are likely to increase by 1.4°C by 2030 and 2.1°C by 2070; the northwest and west are likely to experience faster warming (CIAT; World Bank, 2017). Of all economic sectors, agriculture is the most affected. Among employees of the agricultural sector, small-scale farmers are the most vulnerable. At the same time, the agriculture sector is also a major contributor to climate change

CARE International in Ghana : women rear project - report on livestock productivity and household nutrition survey

The female livestock keepers joined the Women Rear project since its inception and have participated in several project activities including community level gender dialogues, trainings on good livestock husbandry practices, PPR and i2 vaccination campaigns and sensitization on consumption of diverse food groups at household level. This report outlines the methodology, discussions, and conclusions from this exercise

Seed aid for seed security: advice for practitioners

No. 2 presents an overview of the Country Case Studies undertaken to guide the design of the tools presented in Briefs 8 to 10 as well as to examine the effects of different types of interventions. The case studies were undertaken in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe. No. 3 introduces the general concept of seed security and differentiates parameters of availability, access, and seed and variety quality, as well as distinguishing chronic from acute stress. Briefs 4 and 5 consider focused topics that cut across seed assistance and seed security. No. 4 addresses issues of relief and agobiodiversity: the importance of diversity in stabilizing systems and the possible effects of various relief approaches in maintaining, enhancing, or undermining such diversity. No. 5 focuses on the opportunities and risks of using seed aid to move beyond the status quo ante by introducing seed of new varieties (or indeed, new crops altogether). Briefs 6 and 7 present short overviews of practice. No. 6 looks at the range of seed systems routinely used by small farmers in Africa and highlights the escalating importance of local markets . Effective interventions depend on a solid understanding of such standard seed procurement practices. No. 7 sketches the current major seed- system based response options , and reflects on their appropriateness in relation to the stresses on hand. The last set of briefs focus on tools and guidance. No. 8 examines how effective interventions depend on sound and timely assessment, which requires both a tool to assess seed system security and the knowledge and skill to use it. No. 9 starts to bring the cycle to a close by giving guidance on evaluating seed-aid projects , suggesting the types of evaluation needed and their content. The final brief then looks to the future and suggests a checklist for the development of proposals for seed assistance . It is this last which builds on the range of lessons learned

Social work training or social work education? An approach to curriculum design

Population ageing, economic circumstances, and human behaviour are placing social welfare systems under great strain. In England extensive reform of the social work profession is taking place. Training curricula are being redesigned in the context of new standards of competence for social workers – the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). Students must be equipped on qualifying to address an extensive range of human problems, presenting major challenges to educators. Critical theory suggests an approach to tackle one such challenge – selecting the essential content required for areas of particular practice. Teaching on social work with older people is used to illustrate this. Habermas’ theory of cognitive interests highlights the different professional roles served by the social work knowledge base - instrumental, interpretive, and emancipatory. Howe’s application of sociological theory distinguished four social work roles corresponding to these. It is suggested that curriculum design decisions must enable practitioners to operate in each. When preparing students to work with older people, educators therefore need to include interpretive and emancipatory perspectives, and not construct social work purely as an instrumental response to problems older people present. This approach provides one useful rationale for curriculum design decisions, which is applicable to other areas of practice, and to contexts outside England

Towards a possibility-theoretic approach to uncertainty in medical data interpretation for text generation

Many real-world applications that reason about events obtained from raw data must deal with the problem of temporal uncertainty, which arises due to error or inaccuracy in data. Uncertainty also compromises reasoning where relationships between events need to be inferred. This paper discusses an approach to dealing with uncertainty in temporal and causal relations using Possibility Theory, focusing on a family of medical decision support systems that aim to generate textual summaries from raw patient data in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We describe a framework to capture temporal uncertainty and to express it in generated texts by mean of linguistic modifiers. These modifiers have been chosen based on a human experiment testing the association between subjective certainty about a proposition and the participants’ way of verbalising it.peer-reviewe

Summary of proceedings from the launch symposium, discussion, and proposed action plan for the England Centre for Practice Development’s international community of practice for end of life care

This paper provides a summary of summary of proceedings from the launch symposium, discussion, and proposed action plan for the England Centre for Practice Development’s International Community of Practice for End of Life Care held at The Spitfire Cricket Ground, Canterbury, on the 7th October 2016. It has been disseminated for discussion by members of the international community of practice and more widely for discussion and comment. The action plan and priorities in the document were co-created by attendees at the event including the President of The European Association of Palliative Care and several other international experts in end of life care

Global healthcare for the 21st century and beyond

Despite the Alma-Ata goal of acceptable health care for all by the year 2000, gross inequalities continue to condemn the world’s poorer and disadvantaged citizens to inadequate levels of health and health care. Articles in this issue describe important history, cultural influences and political events leading to this disparity, as well as current challenges and model programmes that inform our path forward