Presenter: Anoop Jain
Date and time: Tuesday November 7, 3-4 pm (The presentation will last 20 minutes, followed by in-depth discussion)
Location: University Hall, Room 440 (with light refreshments)
Topic: Child Marriage & Female Adolescent Health in Bihar, India
According to Indian law, child marriage occurs when either the woman is below the age of 18, or when the man is below the age of 21. Yet child marriage remains extremely prevalent throughout India despite this law. This issue disproportionately impacts young girls, and is most common in the Indian state of Bihar. Bihar is home to over 104 million people, and is one of India’s poorest states. The purpose of this talk is to present a broad overview of the prevalence of female child marriage in Bihar, and will examine how female child marriage is a determinant of a variety of deleterious health outcomes. This should motivate further research in how these negative health outcomes can be prevented among this extremely vulnerable population, and how India’s child marriage laws can be better enforced.
- Anoop Jain started working with community activists in Bihar, a state in north India, in the summer of 2010. Together, they were looking to address the biggest public health need in the area. It very quickly became apparent that open defecation was severely stifling health, social, and economic outcomes. This spurred the creation of SHRI, an organization that fights alongside rural Indian communities to end open defecation as a key step in the struggle for health equity, and social and economic justice. Anoop received his BA from Northwestern University in 2009, his MPH from Tulane University in 2013, and is currently a PhD candidate in public health at the University of California, Berkeley. For his work, Anoop won the Global Citizen Award in 2014, was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2016, and won the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Respect in 2017.