Disrupting global commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger: Covid-19 and its effects on adolescent physical and mental health in Jordan and Palestine

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dc.contributor.authorBassam A. Abu Hamad
dc.contributor.authorNicola A. Jones
dc.contributor.authorEric D. Neumeister
dc.contributor.authorAgnieszka M. Małachowska
dc.date.accessioned2023-07-29T07:52:39Z
dc.date.available2023-07-29T07:52:39Z
dc.date.issued2023-07-04
dc.description.abstractSustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2 aim to eradicate poverty and hunger in all their forms. However, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns has disrupted progress toward achieving these goals. Despite considerable attention to the effects of the pandemic on poverty and food insecurity, there has been much less attention to the experiences of forcibly displaced adolescents during Covid-19 lockdown measures. This article addresses this evidence lacuna by drawing on mixed-methods data collected through phone-based surveys (n ¼ 4,319) and in-depth qualitative interviews (n ¼ 191) carried out in 2020 with adolescents (aged 12–19 years) from host and refugee communities in Jordan and Palestine. We also examine whether social protection has been able to mitigate the worst effects of food and economic insecurity on adolescents from host and refugee communities. Descriptive and inferential analysis of the quantitative data was conducted using Stata 16. The qualitative interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically coded using MAXQDA 12 software. We found that a significant proportion of adolescents experienced reduced diet diversity and food insecurity during the Covid-19 lockdown in autumn 2020 in both Jordan and Palestine. Adolescents with the worst economic and food security outcomes also had poorer self-reported physical health, lower resiliency scores, and higher levels of anxiety and depression. In Palestine, social protection measures contributed less to mitigating the negative consequences of the pandemic, whereas in Jordan—largely due to higher transfer amounts—social protection was more significant in mitigating these negative health and well-being consequences. Priority actions for getting adolescent-related SDGs back on track include scaling up emergency-responsive and age- and gender-ensitive social protection, especially for the most disadvantaged young people, including adolescents with disabilities, married girls, adolescents out of school, and young people from refugee households living in host communities, where packages of support are typically more disparate.
dc.description.sponsorshipAcknowledgments: We are grateful to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) child and adolescent health team in the Eastern Mediter-ranean Region office along with the WHO Headquarters team who provided invaluable support for the develop-ment of this publication. Special thanks also to our col-leagues at George Washington University, Dr. Sarah Baird and Erin Oakley, who played an important role in the design and implementation of this work. The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions to data collection and data management from the following colleagues: in Pales-tine, Riyad Diab, Shoroq Abuhamad, Eman Abu Hamra, Ahmed Qandeel, Nadeen Al Redaisy, and Kifah Baniowed; Abu Hamad et al: Disrupting global commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger Art. 2(1) page 11 of 14 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/agh/article-pdf/2/1/1833917/783258/agh.2023.1833917.pdf by guest on 08 July 2023 and in Jordan, Sarah Alheiwidi, Taghreed Alabbadi, and Wafa Amaireh. Thanks also to Megan Devonald and the qualitative research coding team, especially Megan Dumas, Giulia Carpineti, Malgorzata Pollard, Joost Vintges, and Anna Tobor for their research support and to Kathryn O’Neill for editorial support. Finally, the authors would like to sincerely thank all the adolescent girls and boys, their caregivers, and key informants in the State of Pales-tine and Jordan for sharing their invaluable perspectives and insights. Funding: The World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ford Foundation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (# INV-003527) awarded through the NBER, and the UK Aid from the UK govern-ment provided funds to carry out this research.
dc.identifier.citationAbu Hamad, BA, Jones NA, Neumeister ED, Małachowska, AM. Disrupting global commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger: Covid-19 and its effects on adolescent physical and mental health in Jordan and Palestine. Adv Glob Health. 2023;2(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/agh.2023.1833917
dc.identifier.issn2689-9558
dc.identifier.urihttps://dspace.alquds.edu/handle/20.500.12213/8371
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherUniversity of California Press
dc.titleDisrupting global commitments to eradicate poverty and hunger: Covid-19 and its effects on adolescent physical and mental health in Jordan and Palestine
dc.typeArticle
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