New Articles in Global Health: Science and Practice Highlight Growing Demand for Hormonal Implants and Desire to Limit Future Births in Sub-Saharan Africa
Staff with the EngenderHealth-led RESPOND Project have published two scientific articles in the inaugural issue of the journal Global Health: Science and Practice:
- In a Commentary titled "Contraceptive Implants: Providing Better Choice to Meet Growing Family Planning Demand," Roy Jacobstein and Harriet Stanley (both of EngenderHealth) discuss the great potential of hormonal implants to help meet the growing demand for family planning in low-resource countries, especially given a recent marked reduction in commodity costs for this method. The authors highlight innovative service delivery approaches that have increased access to and use of implants, as well as programming pitfalls that must be avoided if implant services are to be scaled up widely and well. In particular, they advocate for the importance of taking a client-centered approach, nurturing providers, ensuring clients' access to removal services, and making implant services available via dedicated providers and mobile services.
- In the article "Women's Growing Desire to Limit Births in Sub-Saharan Africa: Meeting the Challenge," Lynn M. Van Lith (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs), Melanie Yahner (EngenderHealth), and Lynn Bakamjian (consultant) use secondary analyses of Demographic and Health Survey data from 18 countries to examine the characteristics of women in Sub-Saharan Africa who wish to limit childbearing. They find that young women in Africa often intend to limit their future births; this finding runs counter to the common assumption that only older women have such intentions. Large numbers of women have exceeded their desired fertility but do not use family planning, citing fear of side effects and health concerns as barriers. Moreover, many women who want no more children and who use contraception use short-acting contraceptive methods rather than the more effective long-acting or permanent methods. When their analyses are restricted to married women, the authors find that demand for limiting future births nearly equals that for spacing births. They argue that family planning programs must prepare to meet the growing needs of Sub-Saharan African women who want to limit future childbearing--a long-overlooked and underserved population.
Global Health: Science and Practice is a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal published by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Johns Hopkins University, and George Washington University. This journal is intended to share important field experience with those who implement or otherwise support global health programs.
