Religious leaders’ perspectives on preventing adolescent pregnancy in Soudougui, Burkina Faso: a qualitative study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Adolescence is a critical period for sexual and reproductive health, with teenage pregnancy contributing significantly to maternal and neonatal mortality, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This study explores the role of religious leaders in addressing teenage pregnancy. Using a descriptive qualitative research design, 18 religious leaders from various faiths were interviewed in Soudougui in May 2022. Semi-structured interviews captured their perceptions, knowledge and views about preventive strategies regarding teenage pregnancy. Thematically analysed and contextualised. Findings highlight the influential role of religious leaders in shaping community norms in relation to sexual and reproductive health. They utilised their authority to provide age-appropriate, value-based sexual education emphasising chastity, parental involvement and responsible behaviour. Strategies included requiring civil marriage before a religious ceremony, delaying conjugal responsibilities post-marriage and providing support to girls experiencing early pregnancy as part of an effort to reduce community stigma. Views about contraception were divided, reflecting doctrinal differences and barriers to interfaith collaboration. Religious leaders offer significant potential for culturally sensitive public health interventions. However, optimising sexual and reproductive health outcomes for adolescents requires integrating evidence-based practices with religious teachings, fostering interfaith cooperation and building capacity to align public health goals with traditional values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".