Promoting Family Planning
From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development
In this issue of The Soul Beat:
* PROGRAMME EXPERIENCES on projects using radio drama, mass media, and websites
* EVALUATIONS of projects using cyclebeads, IUDs, and Gold Circle clinics
* POLL on HIV Prevention
* STRATEGIC THINKING on optimal birth spacing, hotlines, and teenage mothers
* Spotlight on C-ChANGE PICKS website
* MATERIALS for advocacy, mobilisation, and the media
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This issue of The Soul Beat looks at family planning and reproductive health in Africa. It contains programme experiences, evaluations, strategic thinking documents, materials, and trainings that highlight how communication is being used to promote the adoption of contraception and other child spacing methods to ensure optimal maternal and child health.
If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact soulbeat@comminit.com
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1. Mama Ushauri (Mama Advice) - Tanzania
Produced by the Tanzania Marketing and Communication (T-MARC) Project, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s Reproductive and Child Health Section, Mama Ushauri ("Mama Advice" in Kiswahili) is a serial radio drama focusing on women in different phases of their reproductive lives: a young couple contemplating their first pregnancy; a middle-aged couple discussing birth spacing; and an older couple exploring permanent family planning methods. Mama Ushauri, the central character, is not a health "expert" but is wise and bold and uses her life experiences to promote the use of modern family planning methods.
Contact Nelson Karanja nkaranja@tmarc.or.tz
2. To Give Life and Live - Ivory Coast
This mass media communication and community mobilisation campaign is designed to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS among the female population, lower maternal mortality rates, and prevent early and unwanted pregnancies. The project also addresses the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission, encourages the use of contraceptives, and promotes family planning and prenatal examinations. The project was developed by a group of 20 women journalists in the Ivory Coast who are using their skills - and their connections within the media - to disseminate reproductive health and HIV/AIDS messages to other women, and to explore new ways to reach out to their intended audience.
Contact Bakayoko Zéguéla zeguelag@yahoo.fr
3. Elements of Family Planning Success - Global
The Information & Knowledge for Optimal Health (INFO) Project at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP) is engaged in a web-based activity to create a community with access to supporting resources focused on defining the elements of successful family planning programmes, worldwide. Developed through a collaborative process, the Elements of Family Planning Success website is a social networking site designed for practitioners to: access evidence-based family planning resources; share successes and lessons learned; network with colleagues around the world; exchange ideas; and brainstorm solutions to problems together.
Contact Vanessa Mitchell vmitchel@jhuccp.org
4. Social Marketing Final Report: Three Country Overview
This report is based on a study conducted to research the potential of socially-marketing the Standard Days Method (SDM) in Ecuador, Benin, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). SDM is a relatively new method of natural family planning that helps couples to recognise when they are most fertile. The study sought to assess the feasibility of providing the SDM through social marketing programmes in different contexts, and evaluate the impact of mass media campaigns on knowledge, sales and distribution, and quality of information provided by pharmacists. The study found that the social marketing campaign succeeded in raising awareness of the SDM in all three countries, but was most successful in countries in which television augmented information provided by clinics and other sources.
5. Comparing the Effectiveness and Costs of Alternative Strategies for Improving Access to Information and Services for the IUD in Ghana
By Ivy Osei, Gertrude Voetagbe, Moses Aikins, John Gyapong, Philomena Nyarko, Harriet Birungi, Gloria Quansah Asare, Henrietta Odoi-Agyarko, and Olivia Aglah
This report, published by the Population Council, aimed to assess whether the goals of a project to increase the use of Intra-Uterine Devices (IUDs) in Ghana had been achieved. The project, initiated by the Ghana Health Services (GHS) and implemented by its USAID Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) programme in collaboration with FRONTIERS and EngenderHealth, involved testing a variety of interventions to increase awareness of IUDs and improve access to the method. The research found that community health officers exhibited adequate knowledge of and a positive attitude towards the IUD. The study also found that knowledge of long-acting family planning methods did increase significantly among all women who participated in the project.
6. Impact Data - Gold Circle Clinic Campaign - West Africa
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP) and Sante Familiale et Prevention du SIDA (SFPS) ran a family planning community awareness project which involved the building of Gold Circle clinics in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire. Evaluation data showed that the campaign had a positive impact on contraceptive use and on overall knowledge regarding family planning. Contraceptive prevalence for all women increased by 20% between the baseline and the follow-up. While the prevalence of contraceptive use increased slightly among women who were not exposed to the campaign (4%), the change among those exposed was much greater (39%). Women who were exposed to the campaign contributed the large majority (89%) of the overall increase in contraceptive use.
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PLEASE VOTE IN THE NEW SOUL BEAT AFRICA HIV/AIDS POLL::
In HIV prevention efforts in Africa... (you may choose more than one option)
- too much attention is given to youth (age 15-24)
- too much attention is given to older age groups (25 and up)
- not enough attention is given to youth (age 15-24)
- not enough attention is given to older age groups (25 and up)
- the balance is just right
To vote and send comments, go to the HIV/AIDS theme site
and see the Top Right side of the page.
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7. Optimal Birth Spacing: An In-depth Study of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices
This study, published by the Catalyst Consortium, an initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), examines attitudes and practices around family planning and birth spacing in Egypt. The study found that general knowledge and awareness of the advantages of birth spacing was relatively high, and noted that this was probably due to counselling and television spots. The report recommends designing birth spacing messages for husbands and mothers-in-law, as they are often the main decision-makers when it comes to the timing of pregnancy, especially among young wives. They recommend that messages around the risks associated with frequent pregnancies should be described using scientific documentation, and that messages should be integrated into other non-governmental organisations and women's programmes.
8. Phone Hotline Spreads Family Planning Information in DR Congo
By Catherine Toth
This case study describes how Population Services International (PSI), under their Family Planning Project, set up and managed la Ligne Verte (which means "hotline" in French) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It also explores the lessons learned that may point to the use of cell phone technology as a powerful new tool for health education, especially in countries like the DRC that have little communications infrastructure, such as standard telephone networks and roads. According to the report, knowledge of two or more methods of family planning is strongly correlated with the uptake of a method and that having a discussion about family planning has an even stronger correlation with uptake of a contraceptive method.
9. Trust in Aunties: Testimony and Counselling Through Teenage Mothers - A Successful Way to Achieve Behaviour Change and Empower Youth
By Regina M. Goergen and Flavien Ndonko
This document shares the experience of the "Aunties Project" in Cameroon, an initiative that trains teenage mothers to become peer educators. Formerly, aunts took care of the sexual education of young girls in different communities in the country, but this tradition has largely been lost. To fill this gap, the project recruits and trains teenage mothers to talk about their own experiences and to educate other adolescents in their communities and schools about risky sexual behaviour.
10. 'Get a Permanent Smile'- Increasing Awareness of, Access to, and Utilization of Vasectomy Services in Ghana
This report explores communication-centred strategies that have been used to increase vasectomy utilisation in Ghana. The document describes a 2-year project initiated in 2003 by the ACQUIRE (Access, Quality and Use in Reproductive Health) Project, the Ghana Health Service, and EngenderHealth to introduce and expand vasectomy services in a range of public-and private-sector health facilities in metropolitan Accra and Kumasi. The authors suggest that vasectomy is underutilised not because men do not want to take responsibility for family planning but, rather, because men lack full access to both information and services and thus cannot make informed decisions or take an active part in family planning.
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The C-Change Picks website highlights actions and thinking for improving the effectiveness and sustainability of social and behaviour change communication – with a particular focus on uptake of modern and appropriate family planning methods, access to reproductive health information and services, antenatal and maternal health care, and HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention.
To subscribe to the C-Change Picks e-magazine, please write to cchange@comminit.com
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11. Long-Acting and Permanent Methods: Addressing Unmet Need for Family Planning in Africa
This series brings together eight advocacy briefs on using long acting and permanent methods (LAPMs) of contraception to address unmet needs in Africa. According to the introduction, "The class of long-acting and permanent methods (LAPMs) of contraception comprises four highly effective methods for delaying, spacing, or limiting births. These include the intrauterine device [IUD], contraceptive implants, vasectomy, and female sterilization. Despite their many advantages, LAPMs are the least accessible and least used methods of family planning in sub-Saharan Africa. Increasing access to high-quality LAPM services will ensure that women and men can choose from a balanced mix of contraceptive methods and fulfil their reproductive intentions."
12. Long-Acting and Permanent Methods of Contraception: Without Them, a Country’s Development Will Be Low and Slow
By Roy Jacobstein
This two-page advocacy brief, the third in a series of five briefs published by The ACQUIRE Project, answers key questions about long-acting and/or permanent family planning methods, which include intrauterine devices (IUDs or IUCDs), implants, female sterilisation, and vasectomy. Written in a question and answer format, the brief is designed for policy and reproductive health decision-makers such as health ministers, but is written in a way designed to be accessible to anyone within the reproductive health sector. The brief gives a short overview of family planning in Southern Africa, emphasising the existing unmet need for family planning programmes and methods that are effective.
13. Mobilising Muslim Religious Leaders for Reproductive Health and Family Planning at the Community Level
This manual, created by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Extending Service Delivery Project (ESD), is a 5-day training curriculum designed to equip male and female Muslim religious leaders with the necessary information and skills to better understand, accept, and support the provision of maternal and child health, reproductive health, and family planning (MCH/RH/FP) information and services. The goal of the training within the manual is to build the capacity and leadership of Muslim religious leaders in MCH/RH/FP and gender to support couples and community members in making informed decisions on issues such as safe motherhood, child spacing, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS, and to discourage harmful behaviours, especially gender-based violence.
14. Media Resource Pack on Sexual and Reproductive Health
This online media hub from Panos London includes a range of resources meant to brief the media on raising the visibility of issues related to sexual and reproductive health services. Along with a media briefing document, there are 6 feature stories - 3 print stories and 3 radio features - to illustrate the scope of how media can enhance and inform public debate on sexual and reproductive health issues. Also available are: an online sexual health guide, a list of useful websites, and strategies for developing a study.
15. Repositioning Family Planning: Guidelines for Advocacy Action
This toolkit is designed to help those working in family planning (FP) across Africa to advocate for the visibility, availability, and quality of FP services and counselling, including contraceptive use and healthy timing and spacing of births. It was developed in response to requests from several countries to assist them in accelerating their FP advocacy efforts.
16. Postpartum Family Planning for Healthy Pregnancy Outcomes: A Training Manual
This manual is intended to promote positive health outcomes for mothers, newborns, and infants by improving health workers' skills in fostering healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy (HTSP). It provides practical information and guidance on how to conduct a two-day training for primary health facility-based health workers in providing postpartum family planning information, education, and counselling, and in increasing postpartum women's access to all family planning methods and services. The manual is designed for health trainers, nurses, health supervisors, and community health workers who already have a basic understanding of and experience with reproductive health.
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For more information related to this topic, see these previous issues of The Soul Beat newsletter:
The Soul Beat 116 - Maternal Health
The Soul Beat 110 - Involving Boys and Men
The Soul Beat 79 - Reproductive Health and Family Planning
The Soul Beat 58 - MDG# 5: Improving Maternal Health
Click here to view archived editions of The Soul Beat Newsletter.
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