Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters Podcast

If we designed the HIV response around the girls who need it most, what would we do differently?
A conversation between Laura Ferguson (SRHM), Serah Malaba (Tiko) and Lindsay Hayden (Elton John AIDS Foundation).

In the latest episode of the SRHM Podcast, SRHM Chief Executive Eszter Kismodi speaks with Lara van Kouterik, Interim Co-CEO and Director of Strategy, Evidence and Impact at Girls Not Brides, about why current funding models are falling short and what needs to change.

Drawing on a recent SRHM blog by former Girls Not Brides CEO Dr Faith Mwangi-Powell, the conversation explores why short-term, project-based funding is often ill-suited to addressing complex, interconnected challenges such as child marriage.
Read the blog, 'We know what works. So why can’t we build the architecture to make it last?': https://www.srhm.org/news/we-know-what-works-so-why-cant-we-build-the-architecture-to-make-it-last/

In this episode, Eszter Kismődi and Jamie Vernaelde, Senior researcher at Ipas, explore how anti-rights movements cultivate young people’s involvement from an early age, using schools, universities and campus organisations as entry points.
They trace how this involvement can continue through internships, professional training, mentoring and political networks, creating pathways into positions of influence in law, medicine, communications, advocacy and policy.
Drawing on examples from different countries and contexts, the conversation examines how movements invest in young people not only as activists, but as future professionals and leaders. It looks at the role of education, professional networks, funding, social media and long-term relationship-building in sustaining influence over decades.
The episode asks what these strategies mean for sexual and reproductive health and rights, and what can be learned about the importance of investing in the next generation of SRHR advocates, researchers and professionals.
Read the full report from Ipas: https://www.ipas.org/resource/future-proofing-the-professionalization-of-an-anti-rights-youth-generation/

Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) knowledge production spans a wide range of methodological approaches and perspectives. Yet one set of voices and views that have been missing in discourse are those of practitioners and communities.

While SRHM – together with its peer-reviewed open access journal Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) – has made consistent efforts to engage activists, implementers and community-based organisations, the field at large has not embraced the experience of communities as ‘evidence’ (McHugh et al., 2024).

To address this form of epistemic injustice, IPPF and SRHM are launching the ‘reclaiming knowledge production’ initiative, which aims to foreground the voices, lived experience and expertise of communities and SRHR providers/practitioners in knowledge production.

In partnership, IPPF and SRHM have launched a call for proposals for an SRHM article collection.

Read the full call for proposals at srhmjournal.org.

What does intimacy mean in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence?
This discussion brings together critical perspectives on the rise of AI companions, chatbots and other technologies that promise connection, care and even love. While these systems are often framed as solutions to loneliness or social isolation, the conversation pushes beyond this narrative to examine the political, economic and ethical dimensions that underpin them.
Moderator:
Dr Zahra Stardust
Speakers:
Micaela Mantegna
Dianela Gahn
This is a RightsCon session hosted by Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM), in collaboration with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), following the cancellation of RightsCon 2026.