Harrisburg Keystone Rotary Club is working with some folks from the Hershey Med Center in Kenya. They are doing a research project to determine how having access to menstrual products will affect the attendance of girls in school. This is functioning as a needs assessment for a potential global grant.

 

There is an urgent need for actions that ensure adequate parental and teacher support to adolescent girls to ensure that they receive the understanding, guidance and resources they require to navigate the crucial phase of menarche with confidence and dignity. The study will employ exploratory qualitative design to examine the influence of menstrual practices, knowledge and attitude on school absenteeism among adolescent girls in a selected school in Isiolo Sub-County, Kenya. Isiolo Sub-County is home to various ethnic groups, including the Borana, Somali, Samburu and some Bantu communities, each with its own cultural norms and practices regarding menstruation. These cultural factors can influence menstrual management practices, including the use of traditional methods and taboos that may hinder proper menstrual hygiene. The area is a dry water-stressed region with the majority of its population characterized as poor (NMDA, 2022). As such, in many rural and marginalized areas of Isiolo Sub-County, access to affordable and hygienic menstrual products, such as sanitary pads, may be limited. The lack of access could lead to poor menstrual management, including the use of unhygienic alternatives like pieces of cloth. 

 

Penn State College of Medicine aims to conduct a needs assessment of adolescent girls in Kenya with our existing partners in the Meru College of Nursing. The study involves 150 - 200 adolescent girls aged 12-15 years from Isiolo Sub-County, Kenya. The study will be conducted in 2 phases, phase one will target adolescent girls in junior secondary school in grade 7 and 8 while phase 2 will target girls in form 1 and 2 in senior secondary school. A team of 7-people, 1 researcher from Penn State and 6-enumerators would conduct this research. Data will be collected in cycles. Each cycle will involve four stages involving observation to understand the problem, planning for probable solutions, action taking to ensure change and reflection to understand what has worked and what has not worked. If the actions taken in one cycle fail to effectively address the problem, another action cycle involving different approaches will be considered until change is visible. 

 

In addition to benefiting young women to better manage their menstrual cycle without shame and detriment to their education, a goal of this project is to prove its success and make it replicable throughout other counties in Kenya and perhaps other nations. Our hope is that this may result in a project that will be eligible for a Global Grant in the future.