article · Reproductive Female and Child Health
Many women of reproductive age experience a gap between their need for contraception and their actual use of family planning services, leading to unintended pregnancies. A study evaluated the impact of a structured health education intervention among market women aged 15 to 49 in Osun State. The intervention combined interactive sexual health education sessions, community awareness campaigns, and mobile short message service reminders. Before the intervention, 30.3 percent of women in the intervention group reported current contraceptive use, which increased significantly to 59.6 percent after the programme. By contrast, the control group saw a non-significant change from 38.5 percent to 48.5 percent. The post-intervention difference between both groups confirmed that targeted community education combined with mobile messaging can substantially improve contraceptive uptake among market women.
Unintended pregnancies remain common when access to and understanding of contraceptive services are limited. Providing direct, practical education within workplace communities such as markets helps bridge knowledge gaps and dispels barriers to contraceptive care. By demonstrating that combined community outreach and mobile messaging can nearly double contraceptive uptake, this approach offers a clear path to improving maternal and reproductive health outcomes in underserved populations.
This work demonstrates an applied, field-tested public health delivery model that integrates SMS messaging with face-to-face community education. Healthcare organisations, digital health providers, and public health agencies could adapt the mobile messaging framework and training curricula for wider community deployment. While developed as an educational intervention rather than a proprietary product, the tested communication methods represent ready-to-deploy strategies for public and private healthcare programmes seeking to increase service uptake.
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ABSTRACT Background Despite various initiatives to promote family planning and the availability of various contraceptive methods, many women of reproductive age do not utilise these services effectively, and the gap between need and access has translated to a high unintended pregnancy rate in Osun State. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effect of reproductive health education intervention on family planning uptake among market women of reproductive age in Osun State. Methods A quasi‐experimental study design was used. Ninety‐nine (99) respondents were estimated for each intervention and control group using the formula for comparing two independent proportions: n = (2( Z α + Z β ) 2 p (1 − p ))/( p o − p 1 ) 2 , with α = 0.05, power = 80% and an anticipated difference of 27.1% between groups based on previous studies. The study population comprised market women of reproductive age (15–49 years) residing in Osun State, selected using multi‐stage sampling techniques. The study was conducted in three phases: pre‐intervention, intervention and post‐intervention. At pre‐intervention, baseline data were collected from both control and intervention groups using pre‐tested interviewer‐administered questionnaires. At the intervention phase, interactive sexual health education, community awareness campaigns and short message service (SMS) were used to provide information on family planning services in the intervention group. At post‐intervention, data were collected from both groups using the same questionnaire. Cleaned datasets were exported to SPSS version 25 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were computed for all variables. McNemar's test was used to compare pre‐ and post‐intervention proportions within each group, and chi‐square tests were used for between‐group comparisons. The level of significance was set at p < 0.05. Results In the intervention group, uptake of family planning services (current contraceptive use) increased significantly from 30.3% at baseline to 59.6% at post‐intervention (McNemar's test, p < 0.001). In the control group, uptake increased from 38.5% to 48.5%, but this change was not statistically significant (McNemar's test, p = 0.153). The between‐group difference in post‐intervention uptake was statistically significant ( χ 2 = 8.127, df = 1, p = 0.043). Conclusions This study found that reproductive health education significantly enhanced the uptake of family planning services among market women. This highlights the importance of reproductive health education in improving knowledge about and uptake of family planning services. We recommend that policymakers and health practitioners prioritise such educational interventions to enhance family planning services and improve reproductive health outcomes in similar settings.
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DOI: 10.1002/rfc2.70093
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