The Smart Start program
Smart Start, PSI/E's innovative approach, empowers married adolescent girls and their husbands to achieve financial goals through informed family planning. By positioning contraception as a tool for financial success, it encourages couples to thoughtfully plan births. Following initial success, PSI, with the Ministry of Health (MoH), is integrating Smart Start nationwide into Ethiopia's Health Extension Program under the RISE initiative. Recognising the need for hyper-local adaptation, this project aimed to tailor Smart Start for married adolescent girls aged 15 to 24 in the Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz and Addis Ababa regions.
Derz was engaged to ensure that each regional version was grounded in local insight and validated with community members and health workers.
Research-led adaptation across three regions
- Conducted formative research in all three regions, interviewing healthcare providers, community health workers, and SRH service users to understand local context, language preferences, and cultural considerations
- Identified key adaptation requirements for each region: language, imagery, scenario content, and provider guidance
- Led co-adaptation sessions with regional health teams to review and refine adaptation decisions
- Developed adapted content and visual direction for graphic designers to execute in each regional version
- Reviewed and gave feedback on design drafts against the insight and adaptation brief
- Coordinated with MoH and PSI teams to ensure alignment with national standards throughout
Three contextually adapted versions of the Smart Start toolkit were produced, for Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Addis Ababa, each grounded in field research and validated with regional stakeholders.