Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Oct 8, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 26, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Mar 17, 2023
Mixed methods study to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on availability, utilization, and readiness of family planning and contraceptive services at selected primary health care facilities in Africa and Asia: A study protocol
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated social restrictions may have disrupted the provision of essential services, including family planning and contraceptive services. This research protocol details a mixed-method study to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the primary health system's capacity to provide FP and contraceptive services in three countries: India, Nigeria and Tanzania. This protocol is adapted from a generic study titled ‘Health systems analysis and evaluations of the barriers to availability and readiness of sexual and reproductive health services in COVID-19 affected areas’.
Objective:
This study aims to assess the availability and utilization of family planning and contraceptive services in primary health facilities during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, assess the risk perceptions of COVID-19 stigma, barriers to access, and quality of services from clients’ and providers’ perspectives in the COVID-19 affected areas and to assess the post-pandemic recovery of the facilities in the provision of family planning and contraceptive services.
Methods:
This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods. In-depth interviews will be conducted with clients and health providers at the selected health facilities. Focus group discussions with be conducted with clients at the selected health facilities and in the community. A cross-sectional health facility assessment will be conducted in all the selected health facilities.
Results:
Ethical approval for this study was received in March 2022. Following the project staff recruitment, training and translation of study tools, the data collection was initiated in April 2022. All sites have completed data collection, and the analysis of the results is in progress.
Conclusions:
The findings from this study will provide a better understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family planning and contraceptive services at the facility level, which will help policymakers and health managers develop and strengthen FP policies and services to be more responsive to community needs by strengthening FP service delivery in the health facilities.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.