RESEARCH COMPONENT OF THE ARM OUR YOUTHS HEALTH CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF

RESEARCH COMPONENT OF THE ARM OUR YOUTHS HEALTH CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF

After a highly successful and colorful flag-off ceremony on September 10^th 2019, the formal teachings and evaluation research for the OCI Foundation’s Arm Our Youths (ArOY) Campaign in Anambra State of Nigeria finally commenced across all the 261 senior secondary schools in the State. These teachings formally commenced in the week starting Monday, September the 30^th, 2019, which is the 3^rd week of the academic session that started on September 15^th, 2019.

As is the custom with the OCI Foundation, all of the Foundation’s activities are evaluated through empirical research, and this applies to the ArOY Campaign.

Adopting a Cluster Randomized Control Trial (Cluster-RCT), a team of researchers from Australia and Nigeria will be evaluating the Campaign over a 12-month period. Randomly selected schools in Anambra State and the neighbouring Enugu State (both in South-eastern Nigeria) will be involved in this year-long study.

The results of the research will be vital ahead of the national roll-out of the ArOY Campaign across all senior secondary schools in Nigeria, as lessons from it will be used to ensure that the highest quality of Campaign is introduced across the country.

The 5-member research team are drawn from 4 different universities across 2 different continents, and includes all known university ranks: Professor, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer and Lecturer.

The technical and ethical support for the research is provided from the Griffith University School of Medicine, Australia, and 2 of the researchers are from there. The other researchers are based in Nigeria, and include one each from the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), the Enugu State University of Technology (ESUTH) and the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK).