‘SASA! is the medicine that treats violence’. Qualitative findings on how a community mobilisation intervention to prevent violence against women created change in Kampala, Uganda
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BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) violates women's human rights and is a serious public health concern. Historically strategies to prevent IPV have focussed on individuals and their relationships without addressing the context under which IPV occurs. Primary prevention of IPV is a relatively new focus of international efforts and what SASA!, a phased community mobilisation intervention, seeks to achieve. METHODS: Conducted in Kampala, Uganda, between 2007 and 2012, the SASA! Study is a cluster randomised controlled trial to assess the community-level impact of SASA! This nested qualitative study explores pathways of individual- and community-level change as a result of SASA! Forty in-depth interviews with community members (20 women, 20 men) were conducted at follow-up, audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis complemented by constant comparative methods. RESULTS: SASA! influenced the dynamics of relationships and broader community norms. At the relationship level, SASA! is helping partners to explore the benefits of mutually supportive gender roles; improve communication on a variety of issues; increase levels of joint decision-making and highlight non-violent ways to deal with anger or disagreement. Not all relationships experienced the same breadth and depth of change. At the community level, SASA! has helped foster a climate of non-tolerance of violence by reducing the acceptability of violence against women and increasing individuals' skills, willingness, and sense of responsibility to act to prevent it. It has also developed and strengthened community-based structures to catalyse and support on-going activism to prevent IPV. DISCUSSION: This paper provides evidence of the ways in which community-based violence prevention interventions may reduce IPV in low-income settings. It offers important implications for community mobilisation approaches and for prevention of IPV against women. This research has demonstrated the potential of social norm change interventions at the community level to achieve meaningful impact within project timeframes.
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The SASA intervention was associated with lower rates of IPV among the intervention community.
“At the end of the intervention, there were reported lower rates of IPV among the intervention community.”
From A systematic review of intimate partner violence interventions focused on improving social support and/ mental health outcomes of survivors (2020) · cites this paper as [39]
The Results (Impact at the community level; page unavailable) say participants believed they had observed reductions in violence in their community. But this qualitative paper does not report lower community-wide IPV rates at the end of the intervention; its Methods (Sampling and data collection; page unavailable) say interviewees were selected in part because they had reported reduced violence. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNine of the reviewed studies (3 RCTs, 3 pre-post evaluations, 3 qualitative research) consisted of community-based interventions.
“9 (3 RCTs, 3 pre-post evaluations, 3 qualitative research) of the studies we reviewed consisted of interventions described as being community-based [34–42].”
From A systematic review of intimate partner violence interventions focused on improving social support and/ mental health outcomes of survivors (2020) · cites this paper as [39]
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- Authors
- Kyegombe, N., Starmann, E., Devries, K. M., Michau, L., Nakuti, J., Musuya, T., Watts, C., & Heise, L.
- Affiliations
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (GB)
- Raising Voices (UG)
- Center for Domestic Violence Prevention (UG)
- Corresponding author
- Kyegombe, Nambusi
- ORCID
- Venue
- Global Health Action
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2014-09-12
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 25082-25082
- ISSN
- 1654-9716 (ISSN-L)
- 1654-9880
- PMC
- PMC4165071
- OpenAlex
- W2114151329
- Cited by
- 83
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 5
- FWCI
- 8.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Global Health Action (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- LSHTM Research Online (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Irish Aid
- Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Intimate Partner and Family Violence
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Community Health and Development
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies
- Keywords
- Sasa, intimate partner violence, violence against women, community mobilization, primary prevention, social norm change, gender roles, relational dynamics, community norms, community activism, Kampala
- MeSH terms
- Anger, Awareness, Communication, Community Health Services, Decision Making, Female, Gender Identity, Health Education, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Interviews as Topic, Male, Social Support, Spouse Abuse, Uganda, Qualitative Research
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