DASH (Research Network for Design and Evaluation of Adolescent Health Interventions and Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa) is a collaborative network of leading public health research and training institutions. It brings together experts in population health, epidemiology, public health, health economics, health systems research, implementation science, design research, and policy evaluation from seven Sub-Saharan African countries—Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda—along with Germany. The network builds upon the foundation of ARISE, an established consortium on adolescent health in SSA, of which the Addis Continental Institute of Public Health (ACIPH) was a founding institute. Within DASH, ACIPH serves as the lead organization from Ethiopia, spearheading the country’s research, coordination, and capacity-building efforts. The overarching and long-term goal of DASH is to advance adolescent health across Sub-Saharan Africa through rigorous, population-based intervention and policy research.
Project Aim: The overarching and long-term goal of the DASH is to promote adolescent health in Sub-Saharan Africa through rigorous population-based surveillance intervention and policy research. The key functions to address these objectives are to combine the efficient collection and use of important adolescent health data, and the employment of robust quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and evaluation with local domain-specific expert and stakeholder knowledge on the health domains of nutrition & physical activity, sexual & reproductive health, and mental health & violence.
Through its planned research activities, DASH has the potential to significantly strengthen the research infrastructure and evidence base and thereby improve adolescent health in Sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so, it will address important research gaps related to the need for interventions and policies, as well as their design, evaluation, and transferability.

Years of Implementation: The DASH project is being implemented from 2024 to 2028.

The DASH project comprises four interlinked work packages: Research, which generates evidence on adolescent social health using the Addis HDSS as its surveillance base; Capacity Building, which strengthens local expertise in adolescent research and data systems; Networking, which fosters collaboration among national and global partners; and Policy Engagement and Research Transfer, which ensures that evidence informs policies and programs to improve adolescent well being in Ethiopia. Click here for more