AI Article Synopsis
- Women's groups in low-income rural areas of Bangladesh successfully used participatory methods to enhance women's health, nutrition, and family planning, leading to reduced newborn mortality.
- The study involved over 5,000 women between 2011 and 2013, revealing significant improvements in dietary diversity and healthcare decision-making after the intervention, alongside notable increases in knowledge about contraception and nutrition.
- However, the intervention showed no significant impact on unmet need for family planning or other health outcomes, suggesting the need for further development and refinement of these participatory strategies.
Article Abstract
Background: Women's groups using participatory methods reduced newborn mortality in rural areas of low income countries. Our study assessed a participatory women's group intervention that focused on women's health, nutrition and family planning.
Methods: The study was conducted in three districts in Bangladesh between October 2011 and March 2013, covering a population of around 230 000. On the basis of allocation for the preceding cluster randomised trials, three unions per district were randomly allocated to receive a women's group intervention and three per district were control clusters. Outcomes included unmet need for family planning, morbidity, dietary diversity, night blindness, healthcare decision-making and knowledge of sexual and reproductive health, nutrition and anaemia. A difference-in-difference analysis was used to adjust for secular trends and baseline differences between women taking part in the intervention and a random sample from control clusters.
Results: We interviewed 5355 (91% response rate) women before the intervention and 5128 after (96% response rate). There were significant improvements in women's dietary diversity score (increase of 0.2 (95% CI 0.1 to 0.3)) and participation in healthcare decision-making (proportion increase (95% CI) 14.0% (10.6% to 17.4%)). There were also increases in knowledge about: contraception (4.2% (2.0% to 6.3%)), ways to treat (55.4% (52.2% to 58.5%)) and prevent (71.0% (68.0% to 74.1%)) sexually transmitted infections, nutrition (46.6% (43.6% to 49.6%)) and anaemia prevention (62.8% (60.9% to 64.6%)). There were no significant differences in unmet need for family planning, morbidity or night blindness.
Conclusions: Participatory women's groups have considerable potential to improve women's health knowledge, but evidence of impact on certain outcomes is lacking. Further formative work and intervention development is needed to optimise the impact of this approach for women's health.
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|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941186 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2015-205855 | DOI Listing |
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