Study funding

Girls for Health (G4H) will promote the economic empowerment, agency, and voice of rural adolescent girls by supporting their transition from secondary school to tertiary training in midwifery, medicine, nursing and other health careers, and in so doing, will address the acute shortage of female health workers in rural Northern Nigeria. G4H will integrate proven girls' education strategies with innovative vocational interventions to build 1350 girls' career aspirations and academic achievement and will significantly increase the number of rural girls entering health training institutions (HTI) in four northern states. The program will include: 1) a bridge program offering accelerated academic instruction in science, math and English; 2) vocational counseling and practicums at local health facilities; 3) safe spaces to enhance critical life skills; 4) four month science immersion courses for girls accepted for admission to a health training institution; and 5) HTI capacity building to cultivate a rural female-friendly learning environment. G4H will work towards sustainability from the start by using existing secondary school and HTI infrastructure, and feeding into government rural health worker employment schemes.

G4H will be evaluated using a rigorous cluster randomized controlled trial design, randomizing at the school level to assess its impact on key outcomes of interest that include rural girls' secondary school graduation and subsequent HTI enrollment, retention and completion, as well as delayed marriage and improved agency and voice. Process monitoring and costing analysis will be conducted to support quality implementation and dissemination efforts. The design will ensure that high quality evidence is available to guide the field regarding the effectiveness and costing of in-school bridge programming in broadening rural girls' participation in education and career opportunities in the context of low resource settings characterized by low rates of female participation in education and income generation.

Inclusion Criteria:

• enrolled in secondary school at selected study schools, in her final two years of secondary school

Exclusion Criteria:

• low attendance (<60%) at participating schools.