Social enterprises for child and adolescent health in Sub-Saharan Africa: A realist evaluation

The Goal 3 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is "to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages." In sub-Saharan Africa, millions of children and adolescents are still facing unmet health needs. Social enterprises have emerged as a way to identify and bring about potentially transformative societal change that ultimately improves health and well-being; however, few have targeted their social mission toward improving health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa. We conducted a realist evaluation of social enterprises appraised by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, one of the world's most influential social entrepreneurship organizations for social enterprises that address child and adolescent health needs in sub-Saharan Africa. Nine social enterprise interventions, mothers2mothers, Last Mile Health, Living Goods, Embrace Innovations, Zipline, GiftedMom, VisionSpring, Table for Two International, and BasicNeeds identified from Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and an ongoing social entrepreneurship project led by the authors-4 Youth By Youth-were presented in this chapter. Findings illustrate the possibilities of using social enterprises to address the unmet health needs of children and adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa. It also suggests avenues for future research to advance sustainable social enterprises aimed at improving the health and well-being of children and adolescents in the region.