Overcoming Social Barriers to Family Planning Use: Harnessing Community Networks to Address Unmet Need

This report describes how the Tékponon Jikuagou team developed a project to overcome sovial barriers to family planning by utilizing social networks.

The results of a baseline survey conducted in 2013 by Tekponon Jikuagou revealed the importance of social barriers to FP use. In fact, 36% of women reported that it is not acceptable to talk about family planning in public.

To address these barriers, the Tékponon Jikuagou project in Malawi intervened through social networks, applying network theory and analysis to move beyond a view of women and men as individuals, to an understanding of them as members of formal and informal social networks. Tékponon Jikuagou represents one of the first applications of SNA in the field of FP.

The attached file has both the English and French versions of the report.

Source: Institute for Reproductive Health/Georgetown

Date of Publication: March 25, 2019