Journal Articles

Although health, development, and environment challenges are interconnected, evidence remains fractured across sectors due to methodological and conceptual differences in research and practice. Aligned methods are needed to support Sustainable Development Goal advances and similar agendas. The Bridge Collaborative, an emergent research-practice collaboration, presents principles and recommendations that help harmonize methods for evidence generation and use. Recommendations were generated in the context of designing and evaluating evidence of impact for interventions related to five global challenges (stabilizing the global climate, making food production sustainable, decreasing air pollution and respiratory disease, improving sanitation and water security, and solving hunger and malnutrition) and serve as a starting point for further iteration and testing in a broader set of contexts and disciplines. We adopted six principles and emphasize three methodological recommendations: (1) creation of compatible results chains, (2) consideration of all relevant types of evidence, and (3) evaluation of strength of evidence using a unified rubric. We provide detailed suggestions for how these recommendations can be applied in practice, streamlining efforts to apply multi-objective approaches and/or synthesize evidence in multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary teams. These recommendations advance the necessary process of reconciling existing evidence standards in health, development, and environment, and initiate a common basis for integrated evidence generation and use in research, practice, and policy design.

Climate change, violent conflicts, and HIV/AIDS are linked to multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through complex pathways (Figure 1) that include food insecurity, population displacements and migration, disruptions of health and HIV services, and increased incidences of sexual based violence. This interlinkage has the potential to result in high newborn and under five mortality rates and increased burden of HIV, directly affecting SDG 3.2 and 3.3 with children and adolescents being primarily affected.

The new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed to by governments of the world in 2015, present an unprecedented opportunity for social progress for the new generation of children and young people (UNICEF and Global Coalition to End Child Poverty 2017). Goal 1 calls for “reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions” (Target 1.2) by 2030 (United Nations 2015). The wording of Target 1.2 is significant because for the first time a global poverty goal includes children explicitly and recognizes the multidimensional nature of poverty. It is also the first time that a global poverty goal applies equally to rich and poor countries and refers explicitly to national definitions.

Although the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have contributed to substantial progress in reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day since 1990, it is now generally accepted that poverty goes beyond the simple lack of income. The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all member states of the United Nations (UN) in September 2015 call for “reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions” by 2030 (UNDESA 2016). Although there must be numerous ways of achieving this goal, research evidence on reducing multidimensional poverty is scarce. This paper investigates possible strategies for halving MD poverty among children using the case studies of Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Both Armenia and BiH conducted multidimensional child poverty studies in 2014–2016 based on nationally agreed definitions and using secondary data from representative household budget surveys. This analysis compares two approaches to halving the rate of multidimensional poverty among children aged 5–15 by employing static simulations: 1) reducing deprivation headcount in two to three key dimensions and 2) increasing monetary transfers to the consumption-poor

This study applied UNICEF’s Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA) framework to adolescents (aged 11, 13 and 15) in 37 European countries and Canada using data from the 2013/14 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey. It is one of the first applications of MODA based entirely on data collected from adolescents themselves rather than from household reference persons on their behalf. Unlike most other multidimensional child poverty studies, the present analysis focuses on non-material, relational aspects of child poverty. Substantial cross-country variation was found in the prevalence of adolescent deprivations in nutrition, perceived health, school environment, protection from peer violence, family environment and information access. These single dimensions of poverty did not closely relate to national wealth and income inequality. However, when we looked at deprivation in three or more dimensions (i.e., multidimensional poverty), we found association with income inequality. In most countries, girls were at a higher risk of multidimensional poverty than boys. In addition, adolescents who lived with both parents in the household or reported higher family wealth were consistently less poor than other adolescents, in both single and multiple dimensions. The results of this study show the interconnectedness of social (family, school support) and psychological (health and violence) dimensions of poverty for adolescents in higher income countries. Children poor in the domains of family and school environment are also likely to be poor in terms of perceived health and protection from peer violence.