I can trace the idea for the Evidence to Impact Symposium back nearly a decade, when I attended a conference in Kenya that brought together researchers and policymakers working in education. It wasn’t an academic conference in the traditional sense. It was designed to connect research with policy. I remember thinking: We need something like this in the adolescent space.
As both a researcher and Director of the Population Council’s Girl Innovation, Research, and Learning (GIRL) Center, I’ve always believed we don’t do research for research’s sake. We do research because it is a tool for impact. Yet I often attended traditional research conferences where people presented important findings, but I kept leaving with the same question: So what?
When we began developing our regional strategy for Eastern and Southern Africa, we realized that the region wasn’t necessarily lacking evidence. There is already a substantial body of research on the challenges adolescents face and what works to improve their health and wellbeing, keep them in school, reduce violence, and expand their opportunities for the future. The bigger challenge is ensuring that evidence informs the policies and programs designed to support adolescents. That realization became the foundation for the inaugural Evidence to Impact Symposium.
In June 2026, more than 300 researchers, policymakers, government representatives, implementers, advocates, funders, and young people gathered in Nairobi for three days to consider how evidence can more effectively inform the decisions, policies, and programs that affect adolescents’ lives. A few themes from our conversations stood out and have influenced how I’m thinking about the work ahead.
- Adolescents need holistic solutions, not siloed interventions.
Repeatedly, participants emphasized that adolescents don’t experience health, education, economic opportunity, safety, or mental health as separate parts of their lives. The programs with the greatest impact recognize those connections.
As someone who has worked in this field for more than two decades, I saw something that felt like a real shift. The Population Council has long advocated for holistic, multisectoral programming, but this time it wasn’t just our perspective. It emerged as a common thread across the symposium.
- Generating strong evidence is only the beginning.
Whether discussing the Adolescent Girls Initiative–Kenya (AGI-K) or efforts to influence policy to end female genital mutilation in Ethiopia, the case studies shared during the symposium pointed to a similar lesson: moving research into policy takes time, and it requires understanding where evidence can meet an existing opportunity for change.
In Kenya, a decade of evidence-building through AGI-K ultimately helped inform the country’s national social protection program because the research addressed questions the government needed to answer as it considered how to expand that system. In Ethiopia, evidence from the 10-year GAGE study was brought into public hearings and parliamentary processes, helping to inform the country’s response to female genital mutilation.
These examples reinforced that researchers don’t have to do everything themselves. Different people and organizations play different roles in the cycle of generating evidence, building relationships, understanding policy priorities, and bringing research into the right conversations at the right time. Wherever we sit in that ecosystem, the important thing is to understand the role we can play in helping evidence inform better policies and programs for adolescents and work with others who play complementary roles so that the cycle is completed.
- Who is in the room shapes the evidence.
We made a deliberate decision to invest in participation, especially for young people and researchers from countries in the region. Nearly 40 percent of the symposium budget supported travel scholarships and registration assistance for young people, grassroots organizations, government representatives, and researchers from under-resourced institutions. We wanted the diversity of participants to reflect the diversity of the adolescent ecosystem.
For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of the symposium was hearing young people respond to the evidence being presented. Sometimes they validated what researchers had found. Sometimes they challenged assumptions. They brought a sense of urgency to the conversation and reminded all of us that these discussions are about real lives, not simply research questions.
Looking ahead
It’s still too early to measure the symposium’s success by changes in policy or programming. A single three-day convening doesn’t create that kind of impact on its own.
I do believe we accomplished something important: We created a space where researchers, policymakers, implementers, advocates, funders, and young people were learning from one another and grappling together with what comes next.
If we convene again—and I hope we do—I would like to spend even more time showcasing how evidence has informed policy and programming, creating opportunities for dialogue with government, and helping participants translate what they’ve learned into concrete action.
There was palpable excitement in the room that I hadn’t felt in a long time. People weren’t just presenting research. They were genuinely grappling with what it all meant and, more importantly, what they should do next.
I left the symposium believing that we took an important first step. Because the question was never simply: What does the evidence say? Rather, it has always been: What are we going to do with it?