An Interactive Game Helps Men Start Family Planning Conversations in Eastern Uganda

April 12, 2022An interactive game for men that focuses on male engagement for family planning and culminates with achild-spacing planning card has increased family planning use in eastern Uganda. Facilitated by village health teams, the game—Together We Decide—is a collaboration between IntraHealth International andideas42 as part of theScale-up and Capacity Building in Behavioral Science to Improve the Uptake of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services project (SupCap) project.The project used behavioral science to design, test, and scale up an intervention that would help increase postpartum contraceptive uptake, improve communication about family planning between couples, and increase knowledge about modern contraceptive methods in eastern Uganda.In Uganda,28% of women have an unmet need for family planning. In the eastern region, unmet need is even higher, at 36%. The region has some of the highest fertility rates in the country, ranging from5.6 children per woman to 7.9 children per woman. During the postpartum period,41% of women need contraception to space their pregnancy and27% of women need contraception to limit pregnancy.SupCap found that the game and planning card led more men to believe that couples should decide contraceptive use together and that modern methods of contraception are good options for spacing children.Based on these data, SupCap scaled up the intervention in six districts of eastern Uganda, which made a big difference in family...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Uganda Scale-Up and Capacity Building in Behavioral Science to Improve the Uptake of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services (SupCap) & Community Engagement Source Type: news