The influence of social capital on health behaviours, especially tobacco consumption, is well documented in developed countries, yet less so in less developing countries like India. This longitudinal study examines the impact of social capital on tobacco consumption behaviour in India, utilising two-wave data from the WHO-SAGE panel Survey. Participants were categorised as baseline tobacco users (N = 2258) and non users (N = 1684). From these groups, three dependent variables were formed: baseline users who remained users, baseline users who ceased use, and baseline non-users who initiated tobacco use by the follow-up. Logistic regression assessed the impact of baseline social capital—generalised trust, particularised trust, and social participation on changes in tobacco use, as well as how changes in these indicators over time affected tobacco use. The results of this study indicate a complex relationship between social capital and tobacco use. Particularised trust reduced the likelihood of starting tobacco (OR 0.80, p < .05), while generalised trust increased the likelihood of continued use (OR 1.51, p < .001). Baseline social participation predicted continued use among existing users (OR 1.50, p < .001). Persistent generalised trust was linked to higher cessation rates (OR 1.46, p < .05), but new social participation increased the risk of initiation (OR 2.13, p < .01). The study highlights the dual role of social capital in tobacco consumption, emphasising the need for targeted public health strategies in India.
Climate change poses a significant threat to global health, with serious implications for mental health and overall well-being among children and adolescents, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Existing structural vulnerabilities intensify the impact of climate-related stressors. Current responses largely focus on awareness and post-disaster support and remain insufficient for building long-term resilience. This paper calls for preventive, evidence-based combination interventions that integrate climate change education with family-strengthening and economic empowerment strategies. By enhancing household stability, family functioning, and adaptive capacity, these approaches can mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change. Coordinated, multisectoral efforts are essential to protect vulnerable children and families in an increasingly unstable climate.
Climate change represents one of the greatest global health threats of the 21st century, with disproportionate impacts on marginalized populations, especially women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. With over 118 million people living in extreme poverty, the region faces intensifying droughts, floods, and heat waves that compound existing gender inequalities. Women’s reliance on climate-sensitive livelihoods, combined with limited access to education, land rights, and social power, heightens their vulnerability. Climate disruptions increase workloads, time poverty, displacement, early marriage, and exposure to gender-based violence, while undermining girls’ education and long-term prospects. Addressing these gendered consequences requires urgent, inclusive, and gender-responsive climate action. Without such interventions, progress toward poverty eradication and gender equality will be severely compromised.
The implementation of the Menstrual Health Scheme (MHS) in 2011, followed by subsequent decentralised procurement at the state level in 2014, marked a significant step towards empowering menstrual health. This study analysed the state-wise coverage of Government-supplied sanitary napkins (GS-SNs) among adolescents and assessed their perceived satisfaction. Additionally, study explored their preferred characteristics while buying sanitary napkins. The study employed a cross-sectional design and interviewed 6,715 adolescent girls from 16 States of India. Findings suggest a relatively higher supply of GS-SNs reported from Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, and Andhra Pradesh ranging from 50 to 90
Dominant frameworks in global social work education remain deeply rooted in Eurocentric epistemologies that marginalize the lived experiences, knowledge systems, and social realities of the Global South. This conceptual paper locates the struggle for decolonial global social work education in epistemic form by defining the coloniality of knowledge as a dual epistemic order in formerly colonized societies, where colonial institutions shape dominant knowledge forms while communities sustain parallel epistemic worlds through living systems of care and knowledge production. It positions African literature, with close readings of Achebe, Dangarembga, Armah, and Haile, as sites of theory-making and praxis that reveal the epistemic consequences of colonial education and the possibilities of decolonial recovery. It proposes the Epistemic Topology of Decolonization, a diagnostic and generative framework composed of the Replicant, Participant, and Custodian topologies, which conceptualize decolonization as movement within an epistemic field structured by proximity to indigenous epistemological authority and authorship. By connecting literary critique with educational praxis, the paper argues for decolonial curricula grounded in localized knowledge and indigenous epistemologies that formalize embodied African knowledge systems into methods that reflect African realities and reclaim the intellectual sovereignty of educators and students. This paper contributes to a growing movement to decolonize global social work education and foster reciprocal, anti-colonial learning between the Global North and South. Ultimately, it argues that African scholars and students are not mere consumers of borrowed knowledge but authors of decolonial theory and worldmaking pedagogy. In this context, the Beautyful ones are no longer waiting. They are teaching. Class has been in session. The real question is: are we paying attention?
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is not only confined to impacting women’s physical, mental and sexual health but also imposes adverse health outcomes on growing fetus with higher rates of unwanted pregnancy outcomes and induced abortions. The present study aims to investigate the association between self-reported experience of IPV and pregnancy termination among Indian women based on the analysis of data from the fifth round of the Indian demographic and health surveys. IPV was measured using physical, sexual and emotional violence questions from state module of NFHS-5. To address the objectives, Logistic regression was employed to examine the association between IPV and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Further, Propensity Score Matching analysis was applied to understand the impact of IPV on adverse pregnancy outcomes. It was found that prevalence of pregnancy termination was around 20
The growing presence of children living and working on the streets in Nigerian cities reflects broader patterns of urban inequality, social exclusion, and governance challenges. This study examines how urban residents interpret, respond to, and propose solutions to the phenomenon of street children in three southwestern Nigerian cities—Ibadan, Akure, and Osogbo. Guided by symbolic interactionism, the study adopted an interpretive qualitative design to explore residents’ meaning-making processes and everyday interpretations regarding street children. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifty adult residents selected through purposive sampling, and data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings indicate that residents largely attribute street involvement to structural conditions such as economic hardship, family instability, migration pressures, and limited access to education. Participants also identified cultural expectations, weak social protection systems, and exposure to substance use as contributing influences. Residents’ narratives reflected a range of socially constructed interpretations, from sympathetic and protective attitudes to stigmatizing and judgmental perceptions, demonstrating how public meanings shape community responses and policy preferences. Many participants supported interventions combining poverty reduction, family support, educational access, rehabilitation services, and community sensitization. The findings suggest that streetism extends beyond an individual child welfare concern and is deeply connected to wider urban conditions, including inequality, governance limitations, and socially negotiated perceptions of vulnerability and disorder. Addressing the phenomenon therefore requires coordinated socioeconomic and community-based interventions that respond to structural vulnerabilities while also engaging the social meanings and public attitudes surrounding street-connected children.
Substance use is a major global health concern, influenced by cultural perceptions. In Iran, illicit drugs rank among the top health issues, contributing nearly 2
Social work research in Africa continues to grapple with the dominance of Western ethical frameworks that marginalise Indigenous epistemologies. This paper explores the challenges African social work researchers face in integrating Indigenous research ethics, with a focus on Zimbabwe. The study aims to contribute to the development of an ethically inclusive and context-responsive research paradigm. Using an autoethnographic methodology, five experienced African researchers reflected on their lived experiences navigating both Western and Indigenous research spaces. Data were collected through written narrative responses guided by conversational prompts and analysed using Reflective Thematic Analysis. Key findings reveal five interrelated challenges: the marginalisation of Indigenous ethics in social work education; ontological invisibility within institutional ethical regimes; the hierarchisation of ethical authority; donor-driven ethical compliance; and discursive decolonisation without ethical reconstitution. The study concludes that decolonial transformation in social work research requires more than rhetorical commitment—it demands ethical reconstitution through cooperative frameworks that recognise plural ethical authorities, relational accountability, and epistemic justice. The implications are significant for policymakers, academic institutions, funders, and researchers, calling for a shift from compliance-based to community-grounded ethical practices. This paper advocates for a Decolonial Cooperation Framework as a pathway toward ethical integrity and transformative, socially just research in African contexts.
The proliferation of flavored tobacco products in sub-Saharan Africa represents an emerging public health threat, particularly for medically vulnerable populations such as people living with HIV (PLWH). However, data on the prevalence, patterns, and determinants of flavored tobacco use among African PLWH remain scarce, creating a critical evidence gap. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 762 PLWH attending HIV treatment clinics in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire assessed sociodemographic and HIV clinical characteristics, current tobacco use, flavored product use (cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, and waterpipe), health information sources, risk perceptions, and quality of life using the WHOQOL-HIV BREF instrument. Analyses of flavored tobacco use patterns and correlates were restricted to current smokers (n = 410). Comparisons between flavored and non-flavored tobacco users were conducted using chi-square tests and t-tests. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify independent predictors of flavored tobacco use. Among current smokers, 62.9
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on household food security among urban populations has been widely reported. We assessed the prevalence and factors associated with food insecurity during the pandemic in vulnerable communities in the Northern region of Ghana. Our cross-sectional mixed-methods study comprised 300 caregivers from 16 impoverished communities in Tamale Metropolitan and Sagnarigu Districts. Household food security was evaluated using the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Insecurity Experience Scale Survey Module. About one-third (34
Tobacco use is prevalent among People living with HIV (PLWH), negatively affecting their Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL). Despite false perceptions of being less harmful and socially acceptable, little is known about Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking (WTS) uptake and its link to HRQoL among PLWH in Nigeria. In this study, we aimed to examine WTS use, associated factors, and its relationship with HRQoL in Nigerian PLWH. A cross-sectional study utilizing an interviewer-administered questionnaire was conducted among 761 respondents receiving care at five Anti-Retroviral Therapy centers in Lagos, Nigeria. The WTS Scale was used to measure participants’ use patterns, and the World Health Organization QOL-BREF questionnaire to evaluate HRQoL. Multivariable regression analyses explored factors associated with WTS use and HRQoL. Respondents were predominantly male (63.6
This paper reflects on encounters with two contrasting Zimbabwean rural communities of Birchenough Bridge and Honde Valley. The study explored rural communities’ experiences with Indigenous environment-driven community development. The paper positions the natural environment as a metaphorical teacher and moral educator. Rural communities build knowledge from these environments. The findings were gathered through collaborative Indigenous methodology. The findings show how features like trees, rivers, soils, and herbs shape knowledge, resilience, and ethics. These can inform social work education. Lessons from the communities support decolonizing social work education. The paper argues for incorporating rural environmental experiences into Global South social work curricula. This includes letting students learn from rural environments through supervised and structured rural placements. In conclusion, Social Work training institutions should partner with rural communities. This can help ensure more contextually relevant social work education and practice.
Decolonization exposes the ontological and epistemic vulnerabilities at the heart of contemporary social work. Historically shaped by Enlightenment rationalities and structurally entangled with colonial frameworks, the discipline’s moral and cognitive foundations remain inseparable from Eurocentric universalism, generating relentless tensions between egalitarian ideals and hierarchical practices. Recent critiques of social work education indicate not only curricular revision but also the destabilization of the epistemic and ethical scaffolding that bolsters its professional legitimacy. The argument advanced here contends that the discipline’s survival does not hinge on defending inherited paradigms or achieving epistemic purity, but on cultivating philosophical dissent and epistemic hybridity as constitutive modalities of practice. Through a genealogical reading, the paper traces how universalist moral frameworks and recognition-oriented dialectics historically shaped social work’s ambivalent identity, committed to moral equality and complicit in hierarchies of knowing and caring. The analytic lens then winds through the interstices of hybridity and epistemic friction, conceptualizing social work as a site where competing knowledges meet, tension becomes generative, and meaning emerges through relational negotiation. Attending to the entanglements of power, knowledge, and governance, the paper situates professional practice within systems that discipline both practitioners and subjects, highlighting possibilities for counter-hegemonic praxis that reclaim the emancipatory potential of the field. Decolonization, framed as a dialectical Aufhebung, requires that social work unsettle its colonial inheritance while simultaneously preserving and rearticulating its moral purpose. Survival, in this sense, demands neither the complete rejection of universality nor the uncritical turn toward relativism, but a reflexive, polyphonic practice inextricably linked to relationality, epistemic pluralism, and ethical negotiation across diverse moral worlds.
Depression during pregnancy has been associated with adverse birth outcomes globally. However, no case-control study has explored the relationship in Uttar Pradesh, India. To fulfil this gap, this study investigates the association of maternal psychological factors with adverse birth outcomes, specifically low birth weight and/or preterm birth. This case-control study was conducted between October 2024 and January 2025 in the Raebareli district of Uttar Pradesh. The study included 425 postpartum women (within 3 months of delivery). Cases (212) were women who delivered LBW infants (< 2500 g) and/or preterm (< 37 weeks). Controls (213) had term deliveries (≥ 37 weeks) with normal birth weight (≥ 2500 g). After adjusting for potential confounders, maternal depressive symptoms were significantly associated with increased odds of preterm birth and LBW [AOR = 3.43]. Similarly, anxiety symptoms were also significantly associated with these adverse outcomes [OR = 1.89]. Additionally, sleep disturbances were linked to a twofold increase of adverse outcomes [OR = 2.13]. Other psychological factors, such as persistent crying or weeping due to prolonged unhappiness, a tendency to unnecessarily blame oneself for negative events, and thoughts of self-harm during pregnancy were also found to be significantly associated with an increased odds of preterm birth and LBW. This study reveals a strong association between maternal psychological factors and adverse pregnancy outcomes, including low birth weight and preterm birth, in Central Uttar Pradesh. The findings highlight the urgent need to integrate mental health screening and support into routine antenatal care to improve maternal and neonatal outcomes.
This qualitative study explored the problems of social work education through a neoliberal lens, drawing on in-depth interviews with social workers (n = 8), academics (n = 8), and students (n = 8), selected via purposive and criterion sampling. The following themes were identified through thematic analysis: the neoliberal expansion of social work education, neoliberal academic resources, online education in social work, and neoliberal field practice. In the first theme, participants emphasized the process of educational devaluation caused by high quotas and insufficient or out-of-field academics, particularly highlighting the failure to develop practical skills. The second theme discusses the inability to establish a local context for education conducted primarily due to the use of translated materials and the failure to apply theory to practice. The continuation of online education in social work with high enrollment numbers, as an indicator of the commercialization of higher education, was found to result in the loss of rights in both education and employment. The final theme addresses limited agency capacity amid rising student numbers, along with challenges in field training and supervision. The study’s main recommendations include employing academics formally trained in social work, reducing student quotas, and restructuring online education programs.
Studies show that land ownership is crucial for women’s empowerment, enhancing their social and economic status within their households and society. However, the dynamics differ for tribal communities, as literature suggests that tribal women have higher involvement in decision-making compared to non-tribal women. This study aims to examine the disparity in land ownership and the relationship between land ownership with empowerment among tribal and non-tribal women in rural India, based on fifth round of National Family Health Survey. Two distinct types of empowerment measurement were used: one in which women take joint decisions with their husbands or other family members, or make decisions alone, and another in which they make decisions independently. Through empirical analysis, it is observed that those women who own land have a greater influence on family decisions compared to those who do not own land. Women from landless household working in organized or unorganized sector exhibit higher say in decision making. The type of employment remuneration, religion, age, education, and household economic status plays an important role in their participation in decision-making. The findings of this study highlight the multifaceted nature of women’s empowerment, indicating that factors beyond land ownership significantly influence women’s roles within households.
Background Adolescents living with HIV (ALWHIV) face a high prevalence of depression. In Uganda, limited access to mental health services exacerbates depression, necessitating innovative solutions for early detection and intervention. Machine learning (ML) provides a promising approach for identifying adolescents at risk of depression to facilitate early intervention. This study aims to use machine learning to predict depression among ALWHIV in Uganda. Methods This study analyzed cross-sectional data from 833 ALWHIV aged 10-17 years in Southern Uganda. Depression was assessed using the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) -short version. Seven ML models, including Random Forest, Logistic Regression, Gradient Boosting, decision tree, XGBoost, Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), and Support Vector Machine, were evaluated using stratified 10-fold cross-validation. Model performance metrics included Area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC), Area under precision-recall curve (AUPRC), accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and F1-score. SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) analysis was used to interpret feature importance. Results The median age was 13 years, and the majority of the participants were females (55.5%). The prevalence of depression was 30.97%. The Random Forest model achieved the highest performance (AUROC = 0.79, AUPRC = 0.66). Key predictors of depression included hopelessness, HIV stigma, shame, self-esteem, teacher support, and caregiver support. SHAP analysis highlighted psychosocial challenges as primary predictors of depression, emphasizing the need for psychosocial-based interventions. Conclusion Our study results demonstrated good performance of ML in predicting depression among ALWHIV. However, we acknowledge that the absence of external validation limits the generalizability of these findings. Future research should seek to validate these models in independent cohorts of ALWHIV to confirm their robustness and applicability across different settings.
In developing countries, health of the children has largely been influenced by maternal empowerment. This study investigates the influencing factors of maternal empowerment and their contribution to child health according to the Demographic and Health Survey Bangladesh 2022 dataset. This representative sample included 8,288 children with their mother’s characteristics data. A polychoric principal component analysis was done to make an index. The study utilized descriptive statistics and 95
