Study Area and Period
In 2017, USAID Transform: Primary Health Care project primarily implemented by Pathfinder International, John Snow Inc. and other partners, began supporting the government’s IPPFP initiative in 1225 primary health care facilities. The project is being implemented in four regions - including Amhara, Oromia, the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s (SNNP), and Tigray - in collaboration with each Regional Health Bureau. The project catchment area covers 406 districts (woredas) and approximately 50% of the Ethiopian population across these four regions. The study was conducted in selected health centers located within USAID Transform: Primary Health Care’s implementation regions and focuses on women who delivered in the past 12 months prior to the study. Data was collected from October through December 2019.
Study Design and Sampling
The study employed a comparative cross-sectional study design with a quantitative approach to assess IPPFP utilization among women who delivered in the health centers. The study categorized the women into two categories – including those who used MWHs and those who did not use MWHs (walk-in deliveries). The study was conducted in the health centers with MWHs providing delivery and IPPFP services in the project intervention regions. The sampling frame was all health centers which have MWH facilities and provide deliveries and IPPFP services under the project catchment areas. 143 HCs are listed under the project areas, but only 44 HCs have a functional MWH and provide skilled delivery and IPPFP services. 15 of these HCs were randomly selected for this study. Four health centers from each region were selected from Amhara, Oromia, and SNNP, and three health centers were selected from Tigray.
The second sampling frame list includes all women (name and their address) who delivered in the selected health centers (both who used and who did not used MWHs) for the past one year from the delivery registration book. 9275 women had delivered in the past 12 months in the selected facilities (on average 618 women delivered per HCs). Of which, 40% (3710) of women had used MWHs and delivered in the facilities (247 women per HC). The study randomly selected 62 women from each health center (10% of the total delivery), including a proportion of 40% of women who used MWHs (25 women) and 60% of women who did not use MWHs (37 women). In total, this provided 930 women who delivered in the selected health centers (62*15HCs), where 375 women used MWHs and 555 women did not. Women who have an experience of stillbirth or newborn death in their last delivery were excluded from the study to avoid respondent bias.
After identifying the study participants (postpartum women), the women were traced from the community through health extension workers (HEWs) who informed them about the purpose of the study. All women willing to participate in the study were invited to participate in an interview at a proposed time and place through the HEWs. The data collectors conducted the interviews with the support of HEWs. Of those eligible but who did not respond: 17 (1.8%) were unavailable during their scheduled time and place, 13(1.4%) refused participation, 9 (1%) withdrew after beginning the interview or had incomplete surveys, and 7 (0.8%) women had a stillbirth and were wrongly recorded in the delivery record and were dropped from the analysis. The final data was analyzed with a final sample of 884 participants (361 women who used MWH, 523 women who not use MWH) at a 95.1% response rate.
Data Collection Process
The data was collected using a structured questionnaire developed based on existing literature, previous experience on questionnaire preparation on Postpartum intrauterine contraceptive devices (PPIUCD) research [25, 26], and through discussion with subject area experts. The questionnaire consists of three sub-sections designed to assess: 1) socio-demographic characteristics of women; 2) women’s experience on health education and counseling on IPPFP during their stay in the MWHs; and 3) practice of health service utilization during pregnancy and birth (e.g., delivery complication, mode of delivery) and utilization of IPPFP. In addition to the structured questionnaire, the MWH service standard checklist was used to record all services provided in the MWH [27]. The questionnaire was translated into local languages (Amharic, Tigrigna, and Afan Oromo) prior to the start of the fieldwork. All interviews were conducted in local languages. 20 data collectors and four supervisors, who were fluent in the local languages and experienced in family planning/reproductive health-related data collection, conducted the data collection process. A three-day training was provided to data collectors and supervisors on the content of the questionnaire, issues of confidentiality, ethical conduct of human subject research, and data collection techniques. The training included pretesting the questionnaire in adjacent health centers that were not included in the study. Pre-testing of the data collection instrument was aimed at assessing: (1) how well the instruments elicit the information needed (2) the usefulness of the information collected and (3) the competency of the data collectors. Based on the pre-test results, the instrument was modified. After providing data collection training and modifying the final questionnaire, two data collectors and one supervisor were assigned to each of the regions.
Data Processing and Analysis
The research team assessed the quality, accuracy, and completeness of the collected data using range plausibility and cross-validation checks. Data was checked, coded, and entered using Epi-Data version 3.2. The accuracy of data entry was checked by running frequency analysis and making range checks every time data was entered. The data entry errors were corrected by cross-checking with the completed questionnaire. After completing the data entry, the data was exported to SPSS version 20 for further analysis. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used to analyze the data. Bivariate analyses were done to select important variables for the multivariable analysis. Variables with p-value ≤0.25 in bivariate analyses were transferred into a multivariable logistic regression to manage confounding effects. And an adjusted odds ratio with 95% level of significance was considered for those variables which were found to have significant association (p-value ≤0.05) with the outcome variable (IPPFP use). All variables that were considered in the analysis are described in Table 1.