A cross-continental collaboration
“We look at the world as a global village,” says Fred M. Ssewamala, the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, of the work conducted at the Brown School. “We believe in bi-directional learning: There’s a lot the global north can learn from the global south, and vice versa.”
This “it takes a village” mentality was behind publishing a pioneering book co-edited by Ssewamala and two others with Brown School ties: Ozge Sensoy Bahar, research assistant professor, and Mary M. McKay, the former Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean who is now vice provost of interdisciplinary initiatives.
Featuring the work of more than 40 contributors from North America and Africa, Child Behavioral Health in Sub-Saharan Africa: Towards Evidence Generation and Policy Development epitomizes a word the three editors use in describing its creation: collaboration.
“This would not have happened without the commitment of our authors on the continent,” Sensoy Bahar says.
The book is the first to focus exclusively on child behavioral health in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has long been under-researched. Since the majority of Sub-Saharan Africans are under 21, Sensoy Bahar says this “youth bulge” merits study to better understand the social and behavioral landscape of African children and adolescents, which will, in turn, dictate how this impressionable population becomes economic drivers and global leaders. The new book highlights the current state of policy and research evidence both in the region as a whole and in country-specific contexts.