Baobab: Filling Gaps in Evidence to to Enhance SRHR among Vulnerable Populations in Refugee Settings in the East and Horn of Africa

The Baobab Research Programme Consortium (RPC) is led by the Population Council, Inc. (PC Inc.), in partnership with Population Council, Kenya (PC Kenya) and the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). The Consortium will conduct ‘first-ever,’ large-scale, longitudinal and cross-sectional surveys on violence against children and adolescents, unsafe abortion and unintended pregnancy, drawing on robust, well-regarded and well-known global tools. These data and the process for collecting them will: provide important socio-demographic data and rigorous baselines against which impacts of SRHR interventions within and beyond this RPC can be assessed; furnish a platform for offering SRHR services and referrals; inform appropriate SRHR response plans and actions for refugee settings; and monitor important changes to SRHR in the population over time. These efforts will be complemented by operational research to introduce and scale up the availability of innovative, SRH self-care biomedical technologies within humanitarian programming as a means of enhancing access to SRHR services. The overall expected outcome of the programme is to reduce inequities in SRHR among vulnerable populations in humanitarian settings, through the development of better evidence to inform health policies and evidence-based ‘best practices’ in humanitarian settings. The basic inputs underpinning the programme’s theory of change are research, scientific expertise, influencing/research uptake and partnership activities. Baobab will deliver four integrated outputs, namely: 1) A coherent body of high-quality evidence generated; 2) High-quality policy and programme-relevant evidence communicated and used; 3) Capacity of Southern researchers and humanitarian actors strengthened to generate and use evidence for improving the quality of programming; and 4) Partnerships and networks strengthened to enable the demand for and uptake of evidence.