Logo image
Back
Adolescent Mothers in Eastern and Southern Africa: An Overlooked and Uniquely Vulnerable Subpopulation in the Fight Against HIV
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Adolescent Mothers in Eastern and Southern Africa: An Overlooked and Uniquely Vulnerable Subpopulation in the Fight Against HIV

Allison K. Groves, Luwam T. Gebrekristos, Patrick D. Smith, Kirsten Stoebenau, Marie C. Stoner, Wole Ameyan and Alex C. Ezeh
Journal of adolescent health, v 70(6), pp 895-901
Jun 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.12.012
PMID: 35172930
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.12.012View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Adolescent girls and young women Adolescent motherhood Adolescent pregnancy Africa HIV prevention
Adolescent girls (10–19 years) in Eastern and Southern Africa face a high risk of pregnancy and HIV infection. However, few studies have examined whether the profound developmental, social, and economic changes that accompany adolescent motherhood contribute to HIV risk. This study examines the intersection between adolescent motherhood and HIV infection across 10 Eastern and Southern African countries, where over half of all HIV infections occur among adolescent girls. To evaluate whether adolescent motherhood is associated with HIV infection, we used Demographic and Health Survey data on girls (15–19 years) with HIV test results (N = 19,932) from Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. We examined unweighted bivariate and multivariable associations between adolescent motherhood and HIV using mixed effects logistic regression models that included a country-level random intercept. We examined heterogeneity in the association by testing country-level random slopes using a likelihood ratio test and used intraclass correlation to measure the proportion of total variance explained at the country level. Nearly one fifth of adolescent girls were mothers (range: 9.80%–38.90%), and the HIV prevalence among all adolescent girls was 3.3% (range: 1.03%–10.07%). Relative to nonmothers, adolescent mothers were, on average, older, poorer, and more likely to be married, rural dwellers, and household heads. Adolescent motherhood was positively associated with HIV infection in bivariate and multivariable analyses (odds ratio: 1.87; 95% confidence interval: 1.57–2.23; adjusted odds ratio: 1.53; 95% CI: 1.24–1.89). Among adolescents with HIV test results, we observed a robust association between adolescent motherhood and HIV infection across 10 high-burden countries.

Metrics

20 Record Views
17 citations in Web of Science
15 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Pediatrics
Psychology, Developmental
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Logo image