Self-efficacy and Knowledge (SEEK) Trial to Improve Sexual Reproductive Health and Well-being for Syrian Refugee Women and Girls in Lebanon

Overview

This community-based randomized controlled trial (RCT) aims to evaluate a low-resource/low-intensity integrated sexual reproductive health (SRH) and wellbeing intervention package. It will be delivered in Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) in a rural area in Lebanon to Syrian refugee women and girls aged 15-24.

Use and access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are often inadequate and limited among adolescent girls and young refugee women in humanitarian settings. This is attributed to an array of factors including: limited health literacy, lack of knowledge on where and how to access services, limited availability of services, and gender norms. Further, the nature of humanitarian settings often poses additional mental health pressures because of limited safety, political instability, gender-based violence (GBV), and dire socio-economic and living conditions, among others. This is especially true for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), which hosts the largest number of humanitarian crises in the world, thus rendering the provision of SRH and psychosocial support (PSS) services in humanitarian settings highly compromised. The proposed research aims to evaluate the impact of a WHO-developed low-intensity/low-resource psychosocial support (PSS) SRH-integrated intervention package on the use of selected SRH services, primarily family planning as well as well-being among Syrian adolescent girls and young women refugees, aged 15-24 years, in Lebanon. The research will adopt a community-based randomized controlled trial (RCT) design to evaluate the effectiveness of the PSS-SRH integrated intervention package on the use of selected SRH services as well as mental well-being. The RCT will be accompanied by a rigorous process evaluation during intervention implementation to assess intervention fidelity, attrition, dose and satisfaction, as well as to capture key lessons based on intervention implementation to inform global scale-up in different humanitarian settings. This intervention is expected to be easily integrated into existing primary healthcare settings and specifically to improve selected SRH service use, leading to improved SRH outcomes and reduced SRH-related risks, and ultimately better wellbeing among refugee women and girls. Findings of this RCT are also expected to inform key stakeholders and better guide decision making for such interventions in humanitarian settings.