Community Based | Family Medicine | School of Medicine

Family medicine resident silhouettes at lakeside

Youth empowerment and sexual health promotion in West Bengal, India

Team: Amrita Roy (Principal Investigator), other team members TBD

Partner organizations: TBD

Trainees: Niveditha Pattathil (medical student), Thushadi Kamalasiri (MPH student); others TBD

Funder: Queen’s University

Brief summary: For countries in the Global South such as India, colonization officially ended decades ago as European colonial powers relinquished formal political control; however, postcolonial legacies, combined with neocolonial effects of globalization, contribute to health inequities in the present day – particularly in segments of the population facing non-dominance in power hierarchies. Youth experience non-dominance in Indian society where the age-based hierarchy is deeply engrained in social and cultural norms; social exclusion is heightened when there are other intersecting sources of non-dominance – for example, female youth, lower-caste youth, youth living in poverty, youth with disabilities, and 2SLGBTQ youth face exacerbated inequities. A particularly illustrative example is around sexual health.

Open discussion of sexuality is largely taboo in India; while framed as part of present-day Indian cultural identity, these restrictive attitudes about sexuality can actually be traced back in origin to Victorian-era mores injected into Indian society during British colonial rule. Comprehensive sex education (CSE) programs remain controversial and poorly implemented in schools, leaving youth lacking in fundamental knowledge necessary for bodily autonomy and personal health – even as they are constantly exposed to sexualized content in western-dominated media. The lack of CSE impedes individual and population-level sexual health, and counters public-health efforts to combat the AIDS epidemic. It also makes it more challenging to address sexual and gender-based violence, gender-based discrimination (notably against women), as well as homophobia and transphobia.

Notably, in the debates that have raged on the issue, the youth voice has been systematically excluded; previous research by Principal Investigator, A. Roy, with youth in the state of West Bengal suggest a passionate desire of youth to be directly engaged. This project seeks to pursue Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) on the topic of sexual health promotion in West Bengal, India. Academic and community partnerships in West Bengal will be built to develop a multidisciplinary research team of academics, adult community allies, and youth, to collaboratively guide all aspects of the research.

Ahead of beginning the PAR process, an environmental scan involving multiple sources of data and key informant interviews will help map the local context in a qualitative case study of the region. The YPAR process itself will begin with focus groups with youth who will identify sexual health information needs and specific resources they wish to create to address information needs. Based on the projects identified, youth will be provided skills development opportunities and appropriate supports to execute the work. Systematic, mixed-methods evaluation will be performed (exact methods to be determined based on the projects). As per the iterative nature of PAR, the resources created will be modified based on initial evaluation results, to improve their effectiveness.

For more information: E-mail – amrita.roy@queensu.ca