“Shine Open up and Rise”(SOAR): A Mental Health Participatory Research Framework for Global Health Researchers Dedicated to Girls In Africa

Introduction: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) effectively engages marginalized communities through academic and community collaboration. It enhances research relevance and strengthens capacity to address critical health issues. Adolescent girls often face disproportionate disadvantages due to gendered experiences, with their needs overlooked and their voices often excluded from decision making. Despite growing global efforts to include girls and young women, these efforts remain insufficient. The SOAR framework addresses this gap and is presented here as a case study.

Methods: The SOAR approach is inspired by Isreal and Wallerstein’s framework of CBPR. The steps applied to SOAR included: 1) forming a partnership; 2) assessing community dynamic and strengths; 3) identifying priority and public health issues and research questions; 4) designing and conducting etiologic intervention and or policy research; 5) feeding back and interpreting research findings; and, 6) disseminating and translating findings. The study team worked cross-nationally for months with a community Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Sierra Leone, alongside a Young Women’s Advisory Board (YWAB), a critical preparatory step for conducting a study across regions in the country. This involved forming a partnership with the NGO and five young women.

Results: Our team formed a partnership with a local organization, Rainbo Initiative, committed to the mental health of girls. First, we conducted a pilot visit and held collaborative sessions between researchers and Rainbo leadership, assessing community strengths/needs, co-developing research questions, and refining research protocols through an iterative feedback process before data collection commenced. This allowed for genuine buy-in from all parties.

In assessing community dynamics and strengths, our team traveled with NGO partners and held meetings with local leaders as needed to answer questions. This CBPR SOAR approach led our team to recruit from two urban regions (Freetown, Bo) and two rural regions (Bombali, Kono), which would not have been possible without the stepped approach (N=128).

We identified public health issues through Rainbo highlighting the high prevalence of gender-based violence (GBV) and trauma affecting girls. The collaboration also included jointly designed capacity-building at Rainbo, with the researcher training psychosocial counselors on GBV-related trauma.

In ensuring etiological policy-related research, Rainbo co-facilitated recruitment and engagement of the YWAB. These women contributed meaningfully to the study design, including feedback on consent processes, research instruments, and protocols. The YWAB also participated in pilot recruitment and provided ongoing consultation over several months.

These participatory processes strengthened community trust, improved contextual relevance, and supported ethical data collection among girls and young women. Feedback and dissemination of findings will occur in partnership with Rainbo and community members.

Conclusion: Research on mental health among youth in Africa has been understudied, and there has been little attention paid to the mental health of girls and young women. Implementing the CBPR SOAR framework was instrumental to the success of a project and serves as an example for how to evolve a stepped approach in meaningful partnership with those closest to the problem you aim to solve. The CBPR SOAR approach can inform global health researchers working to improve health and wellbeing of global citizens.