The work on Early Marriage and Health is informed by Sama’s long standing engagement with the issues of women’s health and rights, including that of young people. Time and again it was felt that health initiatives in India have largely been silent on adolescent health in general with early or forced marriage perceived mostly as outside the ambit of health system intervention. Thus, the research on Early Marriage and its linkages with health was carried out with the primary objective of understanding and ascertaining the linkages between early/ child marriage and health, the current role(s) and strategies by the health system in addressing early/child marriage as well as towards recognition and addressing of the implications for the health of women in early marriages. The research report ‘Dataspeak: Early Marriage and Health’ is based on secondary review and analysis of data and literature on early / child marriage, adolescent health, health outcomes of early / child marriage.
The data reviewed includes health and demographic survey statistics and indicators, central and state policies, programmes and strategies. The report highlights the issues and gaps based on the review and analysis of the available data, existing policies and programmes on early marriage and health. The findings from the research on early/child marriage and health, reflect and discuss on key issues and concerns that have emerged such as universal and early nature of marriage in India, absence of data collection and analysis from an early marriage perspective, strategies to address early marriage that have been located mostly outside the health system, need for debate / discussion on early marriage in the context of health, public health framework, no data available on mental health or other forms of violence such as child sexual abuse and caste based violence etc. The research points to some areas for future inquiry in the context of health those are critical to young people including those in situations of early marriage. The research was carried out for over a period of six months from August 2014 to January 2015.