Audrey Pettifor
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Depression is common among adolescents in South Africa, and it has serious short- and long-term consequences. Many young people there grow up facing poverty, violence and other childhood adversity, which adds to this mental health burden.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
Psychology
- Topics
depression
adolescent mental health
adverse childhood experiences
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Test whether the longitudinal link between childhood adversity and depression differs by cash transfer exposure, using HPTN 068 trial data on 2,533 rural South African girls and Child Support Grant data from the Agincourt surveillance system.
- Examine whether cognitive, emotional and stress processes carry the effects of adversity on depression, using moderated mediation analysis to see how cash transfers change these pathways.
- Use causal inference models to estimate whether combining cash transfers with interventions on these mediating factors could further reduce depression among adversity-exposed young women.
- Explore whether reductions in depression could improve later social outcomes, including teen pregnancy, intimate partner violence, educational attainment and financial well-being.
More about the research
Governments across Africa give cash payments to millions of poor households. These payments are linked to better mental health in adults. Much less is known about whether they protect young people who have lived through hardship.
Why it matters
Millions of households in Africa receive government cash transfers. These findings could show how such programs might be designed or combined with other interventions to buffer childhood adversity and improve adolescent mental health. That evidence could help policymakers support young women at high risk of depression, teen pregnancy and intimate partner violence.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Margaret Gichane
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Characterize what economic empowerment means for adolescent girls and young women in Kenya, using qualitative research based on grounded theory.
Jennifer Campbell
University at Buffalo, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Test the preliminary efficacy of a diabetes-tailored conditional cash transfer, tied to biweekly nurse-led virtual education and stress-coping sessions, versus unconditional cash on blood sugar control and quality of life in a randomized trial.
Alexander Bartik
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Social Science
Estimate how an extra $1,000 per month changes health-related behaviors and surroundings, such as nutrition, food security, exercise, substance use, sleep and neighborhood, by comparing randomized cash transfer groups.
The school
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 523 research doctorates a year.
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