Peer-reviewed article
Anzansi family program: a study protocol for a combination intervention addressing developmental and health outcomes for adolescent girls at risk of unaccompanied migration
Ozge Sensoy Bahar, Fred M. Ssewamala, Abdallah Ibrahim, Alice Boateng, Proscovia Nabunya et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study protocol describes ANZANSI, a combination intervention being tested in Ghana to prevent adolescent girls from migrating alone to cities for child labour. The program combines family economic support with family group sessions addressing family cohesion and gender norms. A cluster randomized trial with 100 girls aged 11 to 14 and their caregivers will test whether the intervention is feasible, acceptable, and can improve developmental and health outcomes over 9 months.
Key points
- Ghana has one of the highest child labour rates in Sub-Saharan Africa at 22%, with adolescent girls making up the majority of unaccompanied rural-to-urban migrants
- The ANZANSI intervention combines family economic empowerment with multiple family groups targeting household poverty, family cohesion, and gender norms
- Most existing programs focus on children already working on city streets, but ANZANSI aims to prevent migration before it occurs
- The study uses a two-arm cluster randomized control trial design with 10 schools (5 treatment, 5 control) in Ghana's Northern Region
- Primary outcomes include feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact on developmental and health outcomes
Limitations
This is a study protocol, not a completed evaluation, so it reports no actual results or findings about the intervention's effectiveness. The document does not provide information about specific outcome measures, timelines for results, or details about the family economic empowerment and family group components.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 11% of children (ages 5 to 17) worldwide are child laborers. ILO recently drew attention to migrant child laborers as an underreported, but more vulnerable group to adverse outcomes relative to children working locally. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to be the continent with the highest rates of child labor, with Ghana registering one of the highest incidence rates at 22%, including unaccompanied child migrants engaged in labor. Adolescent girls make up the majority of unaccompanied rural-to-urban migrants in search of better economic opportunities. Studies document the myriad of serious threats to health and emotional well-being experienced by adolescent girls who migrate to engage in child labor. These threats underline the urgent need for theoretically informed preventive interventions, specifically tailored to address the root causes of female child migrant labor and the needs of girls from economically insecure families and communities. METHODS: A two-arm cluster randomized control trial will be conducted to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary impact of ANZANSI (family economic empowerment + multiple family groups) among 100 adolescent girls and their caregivers in the Northern Region of Ghana. Ten schools will be randomly selected from a list of eligible schools, and randomized to one of two study arms: (1) control arm (n = 5 schools, n = 50 adolescent-caregiver dyads); (2) treatment arm (n = 5 schools, n = 50 adolescent-caregiver dyads) receiving ANZANSI over a 9-month period. Adolescents (ages 11 to 14) in the same school will be assigned to the same study condition to avoid contamination. DISCUSSION: The primary aim of the study is to address the urgent need for theoretically and empirically informed interventions that prevent adolescent girls' unaccompanied rural-to-urban migration for child labor. Existing programs are not preventive and primarily target children who already migrated to the city and are living and working on the streets. This study is one of the first studies to pilot test a combination intervention, integrating family economic empowerment targeting household poverty with multiple family groups addressing family cohesion and perceptions on gender norms, child education/labor, all of which are factors, when combined, force girls to drop out of school and migrate. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov ; NCT04231669 ; Registered January 18, 2020.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- ANZANSI: a combination intervention integrating family economic empowerment with multiple family groups addressing family cohesion, gender norms, child education, and child labour
- Population
- 100 adolescent girls aged 11 to 14 and their caregivers in 10 schools in the Northern Region of Ghana
Key finding
This is a study protocol; no outcome data are yet available
Bahar et al. · Prof. Fred M. Ssewamala (OpenAlex works) · 1 Dec 2020