Tamale at a Glance
Tamale’s population grew rapidly over the past two decades, constituting 15% of the Northern Region’s population. As a trunk city with cross-border movements from adjoining regions of Ghana and the West African sub-region, the area faces complex human health and development challenges. Adolescent access to reproductive health services has become a great concern, as well as low school enrollment and high drop-out rates. Attempts at national level approaches to address such challenges, especially with the use of emerging technology, have yielded little results so far.
Tamlae has a history of north-south child migration, as well as high school drop-out rates, leading to sexual exploitation, child labor, and early childbearing
Partners in Tamale
Innovative Adolescent Health Interventions, Tamale aims at building a multi-stakeholder consortium that advances policy research, guides the preparation and adoption of strategies and implement programmes and action plans to promote adolescent health and their general wellbeing towards attaining Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages) and related goals. The consortium aims at achieving these in the Tamale Metropolis, it shall constitute a case study to scale to mainstream into national level policies and development strategies for subsequent replication in emerging secondary cities in Ghana.
Lead Partner
Objectives
Inclusiveness
To prioritize and integrate adolescent health intervention programming into the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly's medium-term development plan to inform the Government of Ghana’s efforts towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals.
Cohesion
To advocate enablers of technological, financial and cultural opportunities for adolescents' access to health information and services through integration of adolescents in the design and implementation of the project.
Wellbeing
To engender the health and general wellbeing of adolescents through multi-stakeholder programming involving public, private and civil society sectors.
Health
To contribute strategies towards reduced child marriage and early childbearing towards retention of at least half of adolescents in school beyond the basic level by the end of the third year of the project.
Innovation
To identify, analyze and disseminate best practices and lessons on the health (including sexual and reproductive health and nutrition) of young adolescents in Tamale Metropolitan Assembly and nationally, using innovative IT and Social Media platforms, with reference to the Child and Family Welfare Policy.
Sensitization
To identify and sensitize future secondary cities to respond to cities and adolescent health challenges and general wellbeing.
Outcomes
Adolescent health prioritized and integrated into the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly’s strategic planning framework.
Seventy-five percent of adolescents with unimpeded access to adolescent friendly health (including sexual and reproductive health) information and services.
School Health and Feeding Programs strengthened to cover 90% of young adolescents in the Tamale Metropolis by the end of the project to serve as an incentive for adolescent retention in school
Reproductive health of adolescent girls in Tamale improved resulting in reduced child marriage and childbearing below 5%
Adoption of lessons for mainstreaming Ghana’s strategies for the Sustainable Development Goals and national level Medium-Term Development Planning Framework
