Family Planning

Saiqa Mullick of Wits Reproductive Health & HIV Research Institute (RHI) in South Africa, along with Grass Root Soccer (GRS), Sonke Gender Justice, and the Population Council, will empower adolescent girls in South African townships as they progress in education by increasing their educational, health, social, and economic assets, while at the same time shifting gender attitudes and encouraging positive behavior among adolescent boys.

Funmilola OlaOlorun of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria and Neetu John of the International Center for Research on Women, in the U.S. will conduct a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a multi-pronged approach for empowering Nigerian women within the household and thereby the wider community. Their program targets both partners of couples, both individually and together, and involves training on gender socialization and finance, and access to family planning.

Zoe Dibb of Girl Effect in the United Kingdom will train a network of girl researchers to use their custom-built mobile phone research application to find out why 99% of married girls aged 15-19 years old in Northern Nigeria do not use modern contraceptives. This peer-to-peer approach should help encourage young girls to speak more openly about their needs and experiences.

Hope Neighbor of Camber Collective in the U.S. will use applied behavioral research to better understand how and why young, sexually active women who are approaching marriage in West Africa make decisions on family planning products. Women appear to regulate their fertility differently based on their specific situation and needs. Young women who are not yet married tend to use unsafe or ineffective practices such as herbal remedies and abortion.

Sarah Rominski of the University of Michigan in the U.S. will conduct longitudinal surveys of women who seek contraception to identify factors associated with satisfaction and particularly with discontinuation, which is common in Ghana. Understanding the reasons women stop using specific contraceptives is important for developing more effective new methods. These reasons may include whether a woman's preference for a specific contraceptive led to them being offered that at the family planning clinic.

Christine Valente of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom will collect data on quantitative beliefs of women in Mozambique on contraceptive use to measure the relative importance of factors such as fear of side effects that inhibit use in order to help implement more effective methods. Many women in Mozambique avoid contraceptives, but the reasons, and importantly how women value those different reasons, remain unclear.

Bvudzai Magadzire of VillageReach in the U.S. will use a mixed methods approach including in person and electronic focus discussion groups with adolescents in Malawi to discover their experiences and opinions of contraceptives to help inform the development of more tailored options. Adolescents as a group face unique challenges when considering contraception, but their specific needs and concerns are mostly unknown.

Takudzwa Sayi of the University of South Florida in the U.S. will use journey mapping to discover women's experiences and responses to hormonal contraceptives, as well as their interaction with providers, in Zimbabwe to help design new contraceptives. They will also hold focus group discussions with family planning providers to find out their views on the uptake of specific methods. They will enroll women and providers in rural and urban areas across Zimbabwe.

Alison Drake of the University of Washington Foundation, Global WACh in the U.S. will conduct an automated SMS-based survey to gather the opinions of women and adolescents on family planning methods in Kenya in order to characterize contraceptive use, reasons for discontinuation, and experience with side effects over a 6-month period that can help develop more acceptable methods. Current surveys capture only a single impression, whereas experiences can change over time. Using a mobile platform requires minimal personnel, and participants can register their opinions remotely.

Aurelien Forget of the University of South Australia in Australia will develop a three-dimensional bioprinted model of the fallopian tube (oviduct) as a screening platform to identify compounds that specifically block sperm activation for developing a female contraceptive that targets male sperm. This contraceptive could in principle be taken before or after intercourse, and would pose no risk to male fertility as it is taken by the female, or to female fertility as it targets a male-specific process. It should also avoid the side effects associated with classical hormonal contraceptives.