OCRN Series x Oxford FemTech: Dr Jamie Lachman on The Global Parenting Initiative

The Oxford Children's Rights Network Series and Oxford FemTech are pleased to welcome Dr Jamie Lachman to lead a discussion on the Global Parenting Initiative.

Given the high prevalence of violence against children worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), effective violence prevention strategies, such as parenting programmes, must be implemented at scale. However, most evidence-based in-person programmes are too resource-intensive and only reach a small portion of the population at risk. The Global Parenting Initiative (GPI) - a five-year research, innovation, capacity strengthening, and advocacy programme - was launched to address these barriers by developing, evaluating, and scaling open-source, playful parenting programmes delivered through digital and human-digital platforms. These innovative interventions are based on the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) in-person programmes, which were co-developed with children and caregivers in Africa, Asia, and Europe and have been tested in 12 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and implemented in 38 LMICs. They are also designed to be embedded within existing government and non-governmental organisation (NGO) services to enable sustainable and scalable implementation. This lecture by Global Parenting Initiative Principal Investigator, Dr Jamie Lachman, will describe the context upon which the initiative was established and the six thematic areas covered by this ambitious initiative. The themes include: 

1) Evaluate: Research-within-implementation studies to increase the evidence of effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and scalability of human-digital playful parenting programmes; 

2) Innovate: Developing and optimising agile, adaptable, and scalable evidence-based human-digital playful parenting technologies

3) Facilitate: Shifting the balance of expertise, leadership, and power in parenting research from the Global North to the Global South by actively promoting capacity-sharing, strengthening local institutions, and fostering a new generation of thought leaders; 

4) Advocate: Collaborating with international health and child development and protection agencies to build a policy environment on the regional and country-level supporting the sustained institutionalisation of parenting programmes; 

5) Generate: Creating a sustainable infrastructure to support the scale-up and capacity-building of playful parenting programmes; and 

6) Accelerate: Scale-up and institutionalisation of human-digital playful parenting programmes embedded into national governments and NGO service delivery systems. 

By working across these six themes, the GPI aims to have provided 25,7 million families with evidence-based human-digital playful parenting support to prevent child maltreatment.

Dr Jamie M. Lachman has over 20 years of experience developing, testing, and scaling up family and parenting programmes to reduce violence against children and improve child wellbeing in low- and middle-income countries. He is a Senior Research and Teaching fellow at the University of Oxford Department of Social Policy and Intervention, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town Centre for Social Science Research, and co-founder and CEO of Parenting for Lifelong Health. He is currently leading the Global Parenting Initiative, a 5-year study aimed at promoting research, innovation, and advocacy for the scale-up of evidence-based playful parenting programmes in the Global South. The programmes and resources that Jamie has co-developed have reached over 210 million beneficiaries in 198 countries and territories. He is also a storyteller, banjo-player, songwriter, facilitator, and clown. Dedicated to promoting our human capacity for peace and laughter, Jamie strives to live each day fully with compassion and amazement.