Evaluating men's involvement as a strategy in sexual and reproductive health promotion

Abstract

Nearly 10 years has passed since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development recognized men as legitimate targets for sexual and reproductive health promotion. This recognition was born of the experience of many health promoting agencies in the 1980s and 1990s who realized that without working with men, change would be very difficult or impossible. It was proposed that men should be involved because their active participation was crucial to the success of programs and to the empowerment of women. However, the idea that men should play an active role in health promotion has not been without its critics, who have posed serious questions about the efficacy of involving men and the effects their involvement would have on women and children. In an effort to examine the lessons learned from men's involvement, this paper reviews published evaluations of interventions that have targeted heterosexual men. Twenty-four studies that met the criteria for inclusion (reported on interventions in areas of sexual and reproductive health that targeted heterosexual men and contained evaluation data) were found. From their review of these studies, the authors suggest that there is some evidence that the use of media approaches may be a successful strategy and that there may be some problems with the application of some cognitive behavior change approaches. However, the fact that few interventions have targeted heterosexual men and have been the subject for detailed evaluation suggests that there is a need for more interventions and better evaluations, which would examine not only the process of men's involvement, but also their impact on the lives of both the men themselves and their families. The reality is that although perhaps no longer regarded as part of the problem, men have yet to be seen as part of the solution.

Barriers to the Use of Modern Contraceptives and Implications for Woman-Controlled Prevention of Sexually Transmitted Infections in Madagascar

“…Even if women have access to womancontrolled, covert methods of protection, discussion of contraceptive use with the primary male partner is likely (Biddlecom & Fapohunda, 1998;Castle et al, 1999;Green et al, 2001). Thus, it is widely believed that male involvement in family planning is necessary for improved contraceptive use (Sternberg & Hubley, 2004), and there is evidence that interventions targeting men have improved men's acceptance of contraception, including the use of condoms (Piotrow et al, 1992;Celentano et al, 1998;Laukamm-Josten et al, 2000;Leonard et al, 2000;Sternberg & Hubley, 2004).…”

Partner Support for Family Planning and Modern Contraceptive Use in Luanda, Angola

“…Male approval of family planning has been associated with increased male involvement 32 . Male involvement has been promoted in many quarters as a key to increasing contraceptive prevalence and has been called into question by others 1,[33][34][35] . Our study had some limitations.…”

The Dutch national summit on preconception care: a summary of definitions, evidence and recommendations

“…Despite increasing evidence of paternal influence on pregnancy outcome and the crucial influence of men on their partners' health behaviours, this meeting-and therefore the literature study-firstly focussed on PCC for women. (Frey et al 2008;Gage et al 2007;Sternberg and Hubley 2004). This meeting does not have its focus specifically on lifestyle risk factors; however, we would like to point out that we recently have published another systematic review regarding effectiveness of PCC interventions on lifestyle risk factors in the preconception phase (Temel et al 2014).…”