Videos and Podcasts

Now is the time for global and national leaders to step up and prioritize the health and development needs of adolescent girls and young women in policy and funding. In sub-Saharan Africa, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 crisis has heightened the risks that adolescent girls and young women face of HIV and gender-based violence, and has undermined their access to education, sexual and reproductive health, and economic empowerment. This crisis demands that we follow the lead of women and girls on the ground, share global resources with them, and allow adolescent girls and young women to take the microphone and further this agenda. This video highlights the urgency of stepping up for women and girls to address these challenges through three powerful voices: Mrs. Monica Geingos, the First Lady of the Republic of Namibia; Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director of UNFPA; and Vilepi Banda, a 17-year-old DREAMS ambassador in Lusaka, Zambia.

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Her Excellency Mrs. Monica Geingos, First Lady of the Republic of Namibia, has been an outspoken champion for women and girls and gender equality in Namibia and globally. In this episode, Janet Fleischman, senior associate with the Global Health Policy Center at CSIS, speaks with Mrs. Geingos about why Covid-19’s disproportionate impact on women and girls should push countries and donors to prioritize them in policy and funding, why the world keeps making the same mistakes in responding to pandemics and global health security, why multi-sectoral initiatives like PEPFAR’s DREAMS are so critical, and why she tells girls and young women not to aspire to become first ladies – but to be politically and economically empowered.

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Students around the world are struggling to return to school in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, but these challenges are especially acute for vulnerable adolescent girls and young women in low income countries, where Covid-19 has magnified the barriers they already faced in getting an education, including HIV, economic hardship, gender-based violence, early marriage, and unintended pregnancy.

In this episode, we’re looking at why education for girls, especially secondary education, is so critical for girls’ health and development, and how Covid-19 threatens their ability to go back to school. Janet Fleischman speaks with Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya, a Kenyan educator and founder of Kakenya’s Dream, which educates and empowers girls and works to end harmful traditional practices, like female genital cutting/mutilation and child marriage. Kakenya describes the impact of Covid-19 on the school for girls that she founded in Kenya, and how the school responded. Janet then takes us to western Kenya, where she speaks to Linda Achieng Orodo, a 19-year-old secondary school student, who participates in the PEPFAR-led DREAMS program. Like many girls in her community, Linda faced many challenges in returning to school after the Covid lockdown, and she gives us a glimpse of why secondary school is so critical for girls in Kenya.

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Covid-19 is threatening education for girls and could reverse decades of health and development progress for girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa. Education for girls, especially secondary education, is critical to prevent HIV, as well as early marriage, unintended pregnancy, and gender-based violence, while promoting empowerment and economic independence. To understand the impact of Covid-19 on education for girls, and the serious challenges girls are facing in returning to school after the Covid-19 lockdowns, we bring you three critical perspectives: Dr. Shannon Hader, UNAIDS deputy director of programme; Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya, founder and president of Kakenya’s Dream, which runs schools for girls in rural Kenya; and Chipego Kalumbi, a 17-year-old student and participant in PEPFAR’s DREAMS’s program in Lusaka, Zambia.

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Economic empowerment is a critical pathway to preventing HIV in adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), and an increasing focus of PEPFAR’s DREAMS program (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe). This episode takes us to western Kenya, where new HIV infections among AGYW are among the highest in the country, fueled by social and economic factors. Janet Fleischman brings us three perspectives about the importance, impact, and challenges of reaching vulnerable young women with economic strengthening activities and why these approaches can improve HIV outcomes. First we speak to Daniel Oluoch-Madiang, the DREAMS coordinator for PATH in Kenya. We then hear from one of the young women participating in DREAMS, Valary Atieno, about how she’s translated the financial support she received from DREAMS into chickens that help her to be independent and avoid risky behaviors. We also hear from one of the DREAMS mentors, Veronica Chesongok Owiti. Their on-the-ground perspectives elevate our understanding about why economic support is so central to HIV prevention for this population.

You can see a photo of Valary with her daughter and her chickens here.

Economic empowerment is a critical pathway to preventing HIV in adolescent girls and young women (AGYW), and an increasing focus of PEPFAR’s DREAMS program (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe). This episode takes us to western Kenya, where new HIV infections among AGYW are among the highest in the country, fueled by social and economic factors. Janet Fleischman brings us three perspectives about the importance, impact, and challenges of reaching vulnerable young women with economic strengthening activities and why these approaches can improve HIV outcomes. First we speak to Daniel Oluoch-Madiang, the DREAMS coordinator for PATH in Kenya. We then hear from one of the young women participating in DREAMS, Valary Atieno, about how she’s translated the financial support she received from DREAMS into chickens that help her to be independent and avoid risky behaviors. We also hear from one of the DREAMS mentors, Veronica Chesongok Owiti. Their on-the-ground perspectives elevate our understanding about why economic support is so central to HIV prevention for this population.

You can see a photo of Valary with her daughter and her chickens here.

IIn this episode of AIDS 2021, we discuss pre-exposure prophylaxis — PrEP — a critical HIV prevention tool for adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in countries with high HIV burdens. Janet Fleischman speaks with Mitchell Warren, the executive director of AVAC, and two women working with Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute in South Africa – Khanyi Kwatsha, a 26-year-old PrEP ambassador, and Elmari Briedenhann, a senior project manager. They discuss the importance of PrEP for AGYW and highlight innovative approaches to better reach this group and to address the inherent challenges of meeting the needs of this population.

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In this episode of AIDS 2020, Janet Fleischman speaks with Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, the deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Center at the University of Cape Town, CEO of the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, and former president of the International AIDS Society. They discuss the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the lives of adolescent girls and young women and the potential impact on the momentum of HIV prevention programs designed for this vulnerable population.

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In this episode of AIDS 2020, Janet Fleischman speaks with two women in Kenya about the impact of Covid-19: Maurine Murenga, who is executive director of Lean On Me Foundation, which supports adolescent mothers living with HIV, as well as a Global Fund board member; and Brenda Ochieng, a peer mentor for Pathfinder’s DREAMS project in Mombasa, Kenya. They discuss the progress in and challenges to HIV prevention among adolescent girls and young women in Kenya, and the worsening impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on this population.

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Covid-19 is taking a heavy toll on adolescent girls and young women in sub-Saharan Africa, exacerbating their risks of HIV, gender-based violence, and unintended pregnancy. To understand these intersecting crises, we spoke to women working with and benefiting from the U.S.-led DREAMS initiative in Lusaka, Zambia: Batuke Walusiku-Mwewa is the Zambia

Country Director for Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB); Grace Njobvu and Grace Nachila are DREAMS participants. DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored and Safe) is a public-private partnership that aims to reduce new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women in 15 countries through a multisectoral package of services.

South Africa, which has the largest HIV epidemic in the world and one of the highest rates of gender-based violence, is now experiencing a worsening COVID-19 epidemic. Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim, Associate Scientific Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA) and a leading global expert on HIV/AIDS, spoke to CSIS about the particularly negative impact of Covid-19 on adolescent girls and young women, and how it is fueling a parallel epidemic of gender-based violence. At a time when even the President of South Africa has condemned the violence against women during the COVID-19 crisis, Professor Abdool Karim calls for a proactive response to these twin crises.

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This episode of the Global Health Policy Center's Take as Directed podcast examines the changing nature of war and conflict and why gender-based violence (GBV) has become a central feature in crises around the world. GHPC Senior Associate Janet Fleischman sits down with Melissa Dalton, senior fellow and deputy director of the CSIS International Security Program and Director of the Cooperative Defense Project (CDP); and Fatima Imam, executive director of Rehabilitation, Empowerment, and Better Health Initiative and Network of Civil Society Organizations in Nigeria.

Janet and the guests discuss how GBV impacts women and girls in crises, focused especially on the Middle East and northern Nigeria, and how these ubiquitous and traumatizing realities undermine global health security and community resilience. This conversation is linked to a new CSIS report, How Can We Better Reach Women and Girls in Crises? and an October 31 conference on U.S. Action for Women’s and Girls’ Health Security, both under the auspices of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security.

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The population of Africa is expected to double over the next 20 years, which means that many countries are facing either a demographic dividend or potentially a disaster, with critical implications for global health and development. In this episode of Take as Directed, Janet Fleischman sits down with Amb. Mark Dybul, Director of the Center for Global Health and Quality, and Professor in the Department of Medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, and formerly head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. They discuss why these demographic trends matter and how U.S. programs can better engage young people, especially adolescent girls and young women, to address their needs and support local innovation.

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In this episode of Take as Directed, host Janet Fleischman sits down with Geeta Rao Gupta, executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women, former president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), and former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. They discuss the new series of The Lancet, of which Geeta was a principal author, that outlines the impact of gender norms and inequalities on health, describes persistent barriers to progress, and provides an agenda for action. They also discuss the recent Women Deliver conference in Vancouver and how to maintain optimism for the future.

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February 6th marks the International Day of Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a United Nations-sponsored awareness day meant to highlight efforts to eradicate FGM. An estimated 200 million women and girls today have undergone some form of FGM, a practice that can cause irreversible physical and mental health challenges. In this episode of Take as Directed, CSIS Global Health Policy Center Senior Associate Janet Fleischman speaks with Dr. Kakenya Ntaiya, a Kenyan educator, activist, and founder of “Kakenya’s Dream”, a leading nongovernmental organization for girls’ education, health, and empowerment, which also works to end FGM and child marriage. Dr. Ntaiya discusses the personal journey that led her to form “Kakenya’s Dream”, and how her work is helping to develop the next generation of women leaders in her community.

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Janet joins host Beverly Kirk or a conversation about Janet's latest report, which examines why women and girls’ health and protection should be a top priority in emergency and humanitarian crisis situations. It also looks at U.S. policy on global health security. This conversation is linked to the report and an October 31 conference on U.S. Action for Women’s and Girls’ Health Security, both under the auspices of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security.

The Smart Women, Smart Power (SWSP) Initiative convenes top-level women leaders in foreign policy, national security, international business, and international development to amplify their voices, spotlight their expertise, and discuss critical and timely issues. The Smart Women, Smart Power biweekly podcast features powerful, in-depth conversations with women leaders from around the globe who are experts in foreign policy, national security, international business, and international development. SWSP Director Beverly Kirk moderates the podcast series.

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Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim is one of the world’s leading AIDS researchers and has made pioneering contributions to understanding the HIV epidemic in young people, especially among young women. She joined us for a two-part series to explain her latest research into epidemic hot spots in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, focusing on both the structural and biological risk factors that facilitate the spread of HIV in young women. In Part 1, she discusses the social and economic factors that contribute to the dramatic differences in HIV rates in women and men at different ages.In Part 2, she describes her recent findings about biological factors that can simultaneously increase a woman’s risk of HIV acquisition and decrease the efficacy of HIV prevention tools.

Click here to link to Part 1 and here to link to Part 2.

Janet Fleischman, hostCathryn Streifel, producer, and Ribka Gemilangsari, editorGlobal Health Policy CenterNovember 30, 2018

Women’s health services, including maternal health and family planning, are critical to enable women and girls to access economic empowerment opportunities. In this episode of Take as Directed, Janet speaks with Margaret Schuler, Senior Vice President of the International Programs Group at World Vision, and David Ray, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at CARE. The three discuss how the current bipartisan momentum around economic empowerment for women provides an opportunity to strengthen linkages with U.S. investments in women’s global health, how such an approach fits with USAID’s “Journey to Self-Reliance” framework, and the role of women’s groups and faith-based organizations in promoting access to both economic empowerment programs and women’s health services.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

Janet Fleischman, host Cathryn Streifel, producer, and Ribka Gemilangsari, editor Global Health Policy Center November 30, 2018

Women’s health services, including maternal health and family planning, are critical to enable women and girls to access economic empowerment opportunities. In this episode of Take as Directed, Janet speaks with Margaret Schuler, Senior Vice President of the International Programs Group at World Vision, and David Ray, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at CARE. The three discuss how the current bipartisan momentum around economic empowerment for women provides an opportunity to strengthen linkages with U.S. investments in women’s global health, how such an approach fits with USAID’s “Journey to Self-Reliance” framework, and the role of women’s groups and faith-based organizations in promoting access to both economic empowerment programs and women’s health services.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

Beth Schlachter, executive director of FP2020, discussed the London Summit on Family Planning that took place in July 2017, at which approximately $2.5 billion in new money was pledged for international family planning. We asked her to reflect on the unique FP2020 partnership, its achievements as well as the challenges it faces in meeting its goals in the world’s 69 lowest income countries. She stressed the importance of continued U.S. leadership in family planning, both in its bilateral assistance and in technical support at the country level, and her concerns about the global impact that would result if the U.S. abandons this role.

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Amb. Virginia Palmer, U.S. Ambassador to Malawi, is a powerful champion for addressing the needs of adolescent girls and young women as the fulcrum for all development goals. We asked her to reflect on efforts in Malawi to control the AIDS epidemic through DREAMS, a public-private partnership designed to prevent new infections in this population. She emphasized the importance of empowering them with education, health and community interventions. Such an approach is necessary to curb the HIV crisis in Malawi, which in turn impacts all other U.S. development programs, and ultimately global health security.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

Celina Schocken is CEO of Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, an independent affiliate of the George W. Bush Institute that focuses on cervical and breast cancer prevention and treatment. We asked her to speak about the organization’s work, including why cervical cancer screening should be part of HIV and reproductive health, new innovative technologies, and an April delegation led by President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush to Botswana and Namibia.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

Tom Malinowski, former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, discusses the complicated human rights dialogue between the U.S. and Ethiopia, and reflects on his tenure at the State Department. He also provides his thoughts on human rights under the Trump administration.vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

On his first business day in office, President Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, which denies U.S. funding to any foreign NGOs that perform, counsel, or refer about abortion with non-U.S. funds. In past Republican administrations, this policy applied only to U.S. funding for international family planning, but President Trump has expanded it to apply to all global health funding. We asked Jen Kates, Vice President and Director of Global Health & HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, to update us on the new policy and the potential implications for global health programs.

Click here to link to the podcast on SoundCloud.

The CSIS Global Health Policy Center produced this video during a visit to Zambia in April 2016. It profiles four young Zambian women who describe the stark realities for adolescent girls and young women that fuel the AIDS epidemic – sexual violence, barriers to education and family planning, and gender inequality. Through their stories and insights, the video illustrates that in order to address the AIDS crisis in Southern Africa, we must understand the risks that young women face and work to engage and empower them.

Click here to watch the video. You can link to the Zambia page of the CSIS Task Force on Women's & Family Health here.

Anta Ba is a 26-year-old woman living in Guédiawaye, a poor urban area of Senegal’s capital, Dakar. In a new CSIS video, Anta explains why she decided to access family planning, despite her husband’s opposition, and why these services matter for her own life and for women’s health and empowerment in Senegal. Through her story, and through the voices of other champions of family planning in Senegal—government and NGO health workers, an imam, and the Minister of Health—the video illustrates new approaches to expanding access to family planning as well as the challenges ahead.

The video was released at a vibrant CSIS event on April 27 called Partnerships for Family Planning: Lessons for U.S. Policy which featured the minister of health, Dr. Awa Marie Coll Seck. In her keynote address, Dr. Coll Seck passionately articulated her commitment to family planning for the health and development of her country and the francophone West African subregion. In this post, I provide highlights of the event and Dr. Coll Seck’s remarks.

Click here to see the video about family planning in Senegal. You can watch the CSIS program Partnerships for Family Planning: Lessons for U.S. Policy in two parts, here and here. This blog post provides an overview of both the video and the CSIS program.

The CSIS Global Health Policy Center produced this video, following a bipartisan congressional staff delegation to Ethiopia in February 2014. The video is designed to bring the voices of Ethiopian women and girls, as well as champions of family planning, into the U.S. policy

discussion. Through the voices of rural women at health posts, health extension workers, and an Orthodox priest, along with an official of the Ministry of Health and the First Lady, the video vividly highlights the importance of family planning as a core component of Ethiopia's development.

This video examines the Zambia experience of Saving Mothers, Giving Life. SMGL builds on the fact that most maternal deaths result from one or more of three delays: in seeking care, in arriving at a health facility, and in receiving appropriate care. SMGL is working to address those delays by supporting linkages

between communities and health facilities through Safe Motherhood Action Groups (SMAGs); by improving communications and transportation in the districts to speed the care and referrals of pregnant women; and by training and hiring health care providers, while improving equipment and standards of care at health facilities.

Cervical cancer kills an estimated 275,000 women every year, 85 percent of whom are in developing countries. The link between HIV and cervical cancer is direct and deadly; HIV-infected women who are also infected with specific types of human papilloma virus (HPV) are 4-5 times more susceptible to cervical cancer than HIV-negative women. This has

important implications for HIV programs, especially in countries with significant HIV epidemics. To understand the opportunities and challenges of integrating cervical cancer screening and treatment into HIV services for women, the Center for Strategic and International Studies traveled to Zambia, which has been at the forefront of integrating these services.

When Joyce Banda unexpectedly ascended to the presidency of Malawi last April, after the death of President Mutharika, many in her country and around the world wondered what her impact would be as Malawi’s first female president. Among the many challenges, her government faces high rates of maternal mortality, high total fertility rates, and high HIV prevalence among women and girls, combined with low levels of women’s economic empowerment and widespread violence against women.

CSIS wanted to learn more about how women leaders in Africa are bringing new attention to women’s health and empowerment in their own countries, and to bring those voices into the discussion about U.S. policy priorities for women’s global health. To do this, we sent a small team to Malawi and Zambia in December 2012.

During an interview with President Banda in Malawi, which we have turned into this short video, we were able to ask her about these issues. Her response underscored the exciting prospects raised by her tenure as well as the daunting challenges ahead: “You know when a woman gets into State House, they notice the little things that would otherwise be ignored by a man,” with particular emphasis on family planning, maternal mortality, and malnutrition. President Banda was especially passionate that the economic empowerment of women is an essential step to ensure that there is effective family planning: “it is only when a women is economically empowered that she can negotiate at household level with her husband about the number of children that body of hers can have.”

In November 2011, a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) visited Zambia to produce a video on vaccination efforts -– their value, their implementation and the challenges they face. In the current global environment of austerity and ever-decreasing budgets, immunizations represent one of the pillars of global health that is a cost effective, proven intervention.

Beyond protecting millions of children every year from infectious diseases, vaccines often provide the backbone of the health care system. When a mother brings her child in for routine immunizations, it can be an entry point to provide her with other health services –- HIV counseling and testing, family planning information and services, and bed nets to protect her children from malaria. In this way, routine immunizations can also help the mother and the rest of the family to access health care.