Abstract
A USAID-sponsored family planning project called "FALAH" (Family Advancement for Life and Health), implemented in 20 districts of Pakistan, aimed to lower unmet need for family planning by improving access to services. To enhance the quality of care offered by the public health system, the FALAH project trained 10,534 facility-based health care providers, managers, and medical college faculty members to offer client-centered family planning services, which included a module to explain the Islamic viewpoint on family planning developed through an iterative process involving religious scholars and public health experts. At the end of the FALAH project, we conducted a situation analysis of health facilities including interviews with providers to measure family planning knowledge of trained and untrained providers; interviewed faculty to obtain their feedback about the training module; and measured changes in women's contraceptive use through baseline and endline surveys. Trained providers had a better understanding of family planning concepts than untrained providers. In addition, discussions with trained providers indicated that the training module on Islam and family planning helped them to become advocates for family planning. Faculty indicated that the module enhanced their confidence about the topic of family planning and Islam, making it easier to introduce and discuss the issue with their students. Over the 3.5-year project period, which included several components in addition to the training activity, we found an overall increase of 9 percentage points in contraceptive prevalence in the project implementation districts-from 29% to 38%. The Islam and family planning module has now been included in the teaching program of major public-sector medical universities and the Regional Training Institutes of the Population Welfare Department. Other countries with sizeable Muslim populations and low contraceptive prevalence could benefit from this module.
Highlights
Global Health: Science and Practice 2013 | Volume 1 | Number 2 space or limit their births but are not using contraception and have an unmet need.[1]
The ‘‘Basic Minimum Family Planning Contents’’ training package with the module on Islam and family planning has been introduced to 174 faculty members of 6 major universities of Pakistan and their affiliated medical colleges: the University of Health Sciences Lahore; Dow University of Health Sciences Karachi; Khyber Medical University Peshawar; Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Larkana; Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women Shaheed Benazirabad; and Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro
The training module has been incorporated into the teaching program conducted by the Population Welfare Program through its Regional Training Institutes all over Pakistan
Summary
Global Health: Science and Practice 2013 | Volume 1 | Number 2 space or limit their births but are not using contraception and have an unmet need.[1]. Among the many weak areas identified, the one highlighted most often was faculty’s concern about whether family planning was allowed in Islam For this reason, we developed 2 sets of training programs to deliver client-centered family planning services: one to train existing health care providers and the other to train faculty of medical colleges. We developed 2 sets of training programs to deliver client-centered family planning services: one to train existing health care providers and the other to train faculty of medical colleges Both training prowww.ghspjournal.org grams included the module on Islam and family planning. Misconceptions ranged from labeling family planning as a conspiracy to limit the size of the Muslim population to equating contraception with infanticide Trainers used this list to provide counterarguments during the training, to help trainees address their own misconceptions, and to use the same arguments to convince others. The trainers provided participants with a list of edicts on Islam and family planning issued by Muslim scholars
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