Researchers at the Emory Rollins School of Public Health’s Global Research for Women (GROW) initiative have entered into a four-year partnership with CARE’s Tipping Point Project, aimed at improving the lives of adolescent girls. Researchers will evaluate the CARE Tipping Point Project, which uses a social norms approach in Nepal and Bangladesh to empower adolescent girls and their communities to delay marriage and to promote girls’ rights. 

Rollins researchers Kathryn Yount, PhD, and Cari Jo Clark, ScD, MPH, are co-principal investigators of the evaluation in Nepal. They are working in partnership with Anne Sprinkel, Elizabeth Brezovich, and Sadhvi Kalra at CARE USA; Dipendra Sharma and Shikha Sunuwar at CARE Nepal; and Sudhindra Sharma, PhD, executive director of interdisciplinary analysts. Ruchira Naved, PhD, senior scientist of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh is leading the evaluation of Tipping Point in Bangladesh. 

“Child marriage has harmful effects on women throughout their lives, in critical areas such as employment and economic agency, the risk of violence in marriage, and long-term health,” says Yount. “Intervening in adolescence hopefully interrupts a cascade of adverse outcomes for girls.” 

The CARE Tipping Point program is innovative and comprehensive, so findings from the evaluation will advance knowledge about how adolescent, family and community-oriented programming can improve the life trajectories of girls.

Rollins researchers are joining the partnership in the second phase of the CARE Tipping Point project and are providing leadership on evaluation design to understand the impacts of this program. Findings will provide insights on efficacy of the project’s approaches and the impact of addressing gender norms related to sexuality as a root cause of child marriage.

“Our team at Rollins has a critical role to play in partnerships with implementing agencies like CARE,” says Yount. “We provide complementary expertise that can strengthen the rigor and visibility of impact evaluations of important programs, like CARE’s Tipping Point. We are excited to work with CARE and for this evaluation to be the start of a longer-term partnership.”