Rothschild and Co-authors Examine Preference-Aligned Fertility Management in Northern Nigeria
Posted: 5/23/2024 (CSDE Research)
CSDE Affiliate Claire Rothschild (Population Services International) released an article with co-authors in BMJ Global Health, titled “Preference-aligned fertility management among married adolescent girls in Northern Nigeria: assessing a new measure of contraceptive autonomy“. Universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare—including family planning (FP)—is a global priority, yet there is no standard outcome measure to evaluate rights-based FP program performance at the regional, national or global levels. Authors collected a modified version of preference-aligned fertility management (PFM), a newly proposed rights-based FP outcome measure which they operationalized as concordance between an individual’s desired and actual current contraceptive use, within a cohort of married adolescent girls in Northern Nigeria. The study found that PFM captured meaningful discordance between contraceptive use desires and behaviours in this cohort. Observed discordance provides actionable insights for program intervention to better support people to achieve their self-identified contraceptive preferences.