of Indian females are estimated to experience childbearing during adolescence \[[@B13][@B14]\]. Additionally, young adults ages 15 to 29 are responsible for 50% of the new cases of HIV occurring each year in India \[[@B15]\].

Mumbai is one of India's largest cities, with more than 40% of its residents living in slums \[[@B16]\]. District-level data suggests that in urban portions of Mumbai, nearly half of women ages 15 to 49 years of age are anemic and approximately 20% are underweight. One in ten women are married before 18 years of age, with only 27.7% of women reporting having had a female health worker speak to them about family planning \[[@B10]\]. Additionally, mental health issues are a challenge in slum communities, with studies suggesting such communities face a disproportionately higher burdena program evaluation, using a quasi-experimental design, that sought to assess the effectiveness of Girls Health Champions, a school-based peer health education intervention in Mumbai, India for adolescent girls in the eighth, ninth, and tenth standards (grades). Research was conducted between August 2016 and January 2017 in five government-aided schools in low-income urban communities in Mumbai. The intervention was conducted separately at each school during this period, utilizing the same protocol in each school.

The intervention involved first educating and training a subset of adolescent girls at each participating school as peer health educators (Champions) using the four-part Girls Health Champions curriculum. Following the completion of this training, the Champions were then provided structured opportunities in-school to teach the same four-part curriculum directly to their classmates in the eighth,