Utilization of family planning and volunteer counseling and testing service and associated factors among preparatory school students in Arba Minch Town, Southern Ethiopia: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: the utilization of reproductive health service plays significant role in preventing youths from different reproductive related health problems. Adolescents in Ethiopia have inadequate access to information and services. The objection of this study was to assess utilization of family planning and volunteer counseling and testing service and associated factors among preparatory school students in Arba Minch Town. METHOD: institutional based cross-sectional study was conducted among randomly selected 522 regular preparatory students in Arba Minch Town from December 01-30/2019. Data was entered and clean into Epidata-4.6 templates then transferred to SPSS-25 statistical software for analysis. A bi-variable and multivariable logistic regression model was used to identify statistically significant variables of the independent variable. Variables with P-value < 0.05 in the final model were considered significant determinant variables. RESULT: out of the total of 541selected students, 522 responded to the questionnaires yielding a response rate of 96.48%. The mean age of the study participant was 17.8 with (SD±0.8) years. From those who had sexual intercourse 78.6% and 29.3% of them used family planning and voluntary counseling and testing service, respectively. Sexual intercourse experienced adolescents were 8.24 times more likely utilized Family Planning (FP) service than their counterparts (AOR=8.236, 95% CI: 6.18-15.76). The study participants living with both parents were about 1.6 times (AOR=1.645, CI: 1.077-2.513 more likely to use voluntary counseling and testing service compared to those who living with others. CONCLUSIONS: based on this finding, majority of adolescents used family planning, but voluntary counseling and testing service utilization were low. The reasons for not utilizing voluntary counseling and testing service were felt ashamed from friends and unfriendly approach of health workers during service provision. So, we can recommend that encourage adolescents open discussion about reproductive health service utilization with different peoples, open discussion within couples and encourage to increase female education are important steps to improve adolescent’s reproductive service utilization.