Development of an Intervention to Support Reproductive Health of Garment Factory Workers in Cambodia

Abstract

Background: Garment factory workers in Cambodia are potentially a vulnerable population in terms of support for reproductive health issues and access to services, as the majority are young women aged under 30 years who have migrated from rural areas away from their family and community support. The aim of this paper was to describe the development of an intervention to support the reproductive health of garment factory workers in Cambodia.Methods: The research was conducted by a multidisciplinary team with backgrounds in public health, linguistics, digital cultures and service delivery in a suburb of Phnom Penh where many garment factories cluster. Informed by intervention mapping approaches, we conducted a needs assessment with general and participant observation and semi-structured interviews, followed by intervention development activities including specifying possible behaviour change, designing the intervention and producing and refining intervention content.Results: Our research identified some challenges that Cambodian garment factory workers experience regarding contraception and abortion. Concerns or experience of side-effects were identified as an important determinant leading to non-use of effective contraception and subsequent unintended pregnancy. Financial constraints or a desire to space pregnancies were the main reported reasons to seek an abortion. Information about medical abortion given to women by private providers was often verbal, with packaging and the drug information leaflet withheld. Given the observed widespread use of social media among factory workers, we developed three short ‘edutainment’ videos about contraception which were evaluated after one month. In addition we adapted three informative videos made by Marie Stopes International (MSI) from English to the Khmer language, and also adapted the MSI medical abortion ‘Mariprist’ instruction leaflet to a simple video format.Conclusions: We describe the development of an intervention to support reproductive health among garment factory workers in Cambodia. These videos could be further improved and additional videos could be developed. More work is required to develop appropriate and effective interventions to support reproductive health of garment factory workers in Cambodia.Trial registration: N/A