Mass Media Family Planning Promotion in Three Nigerian Cities

Abstract

Television promotion of family planning and clinic sites in three cities of Nigeria--Ilorin, Ibadan, and Enugu--played a significant role in 1985-88 in increasing the number of new acceptors at family planning clinics in each city. Family planning skits, prepared with advice and support from the local service providers, were included in existing popular entertainment shows. Questions asked in a recall survey among the exposed population in Enugu and Ibadan revealed that about half of those surveyed in both cities had seen the television episodes. Of those who had watched, 79 and 99 percent, respectively, recalled the family planning messages, and 69 and 88 percent, respectively, recalled specific clinic sites mentioned. Following the media promotion, the number of new clinic clients per quarter in Ilorin increased almost fivefold (in the original clinics evaluated); in Enugu, the number of new clients per month more than doubled; and in Ibadan, the number of new clients increased threefold. Use of entertainment through this "enter-educate approach" is a promising technique that can be replicated in different settings to encourage new clients to seek family planning services.

Engendering the Attainment of the SDG-3 in Africa: Overcoming the Socio Cultural Factors Contributing to Maternal Mortality

“…The positive impact of family planning on the burden of MMR and the barriers to contraceptive uptake has been documented 54 . Again, we highlighted evidence showing how BCC has been used to great effect to improve client uptake of family planning services in our setting 63 . Going forward, we opine that there is the need to specifically include family planning education and counseling in community-based services using the strategy of Community-Based Family Planning (CBFP) Programme.…”

“…We believe that a better knowledge of how harmful traditional practices are to the health of women and girls as well as the benefits of discontinuing these practices in the community could contribute to the overall reduction in the MMR burden. For example, entertainment education and mass media campaigns (two recognized BCC tools), have been used to great effect in improving family planning uptake in Nigeria 63 . This should provide encouragement that BCC strategies are effective in bringing about positive change in health behaviour 64 .…”

“…In particular, we suggest the continued engagement of government (at both the Federal and State level) to ensure sustenance of political and budgetary support needed for increasing the cadre of trained teachers, retaining and incentivizing trained ones as well as the provision of hospitable classrooms and sufficient teaching materials. Again, community engagement, using the techniques previously described 63,64 , will be helpful in mitigating community and opinion leaders' continued call for dilution of the curriculum content and other forms of opposition to the delivery of sexuality education.…”

Evaluation of a Communication Campaign to Improve Continuation Among First-Time Injectable Contraceptive Users in Nyando District, Kenya

“…[10][11][12][13][14][15] Communication campaigns, which deliver messages repetitively, have been associated with increased adoption of contraceptive use; [16][17][18][19][20][21] in these studies, radio was an important channel of message delivery. Such campaigns may be a viable means of improving method continuation.…”

Multi-Media Campaigns, Interpersonal Contacts and Contraceptive Behaviour in Southwest Nigeria

“…Recent findings suggest that exposure to family planning messages on radio, television and the print media is strongly associated with contraceptive behaviour (Piotrow et al, 1990;Kincaid et al, 1992;Westoff and Rodríguez, 1993), although certain issues (such as the problem of disentangling the direction of causality between the two events) are yet to be conclusively resolved. One important element of this relationship that requires attention, however, is the process by which mass media messages lead to a decision to use or not to use (or to continue or not to continue) contraception.…”