The Stepping Stones and Creating Futures intervention to prevent intimate partner violence and HIV-risk behaviours in Durban, South Africa.

The Stepping Stones and Creating Futures intervention was developed to reduce women's experiences, and men's perpetration of IPV in urban informal settlements in South Africa, through transforming gender norms, and strengthening livelihoods. The Stepping Stones and Creating Futures intervention trial is a cluster randomized control trial (CRT), with two arms and is open label. The study population are out-of-school young women and men aged 18-30 (at baseline), resident in informal settlements, and without formal employment. The Stepping Stones and Creating Futures is a participatory intervention, which primarily works with single sex groups. Groups of approximately 20 in size. The intervention seeks to transform gender norms and strengthen livelihoods. It is delivered by same-sex, trained facilitators, and comprises of 21 sessions, each approximately 3 hours long.
A total 680 young women and 677 young men were enrolled into the study and data was collected from enrolled participants at baseline, 12 months post baseline and 24 months post baseline, with baseline data collected from September 2015-February 2016. The study protocol was published in BMC Public Health in 2017 and included a short overview of statistical methods (Gibbs et al. BMC Public Health (2017) 17:336 DOI 10.1186/s12889-017-4223-x)