Aug 8, 2021
When women and couples have access to voluntary family planning and can choose whether, when, and how often to have children, multigenerational benefits accrue across the health, education, and economic sectors. Despite these benefits, 218 million women in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) who want to delay or avoid pregnancy do not use modern contraceptive methods.
Contraceptive use dynamics, including how often women switch or stop using family planning methods, contribute to contraceptive prevalence rates, or the percentage of women currently using a particular method. Contraceptive use dynamics also play a role in determining reproductive outcomes like unintended pregnancy. However, data on contraceptive use dynamics can be difficult to analyze and interpret. Data are typically collected by asking women to recall their monthly contraceptive use over a period of several years, via retrospective calendars; the calendar data are then analyzed using advanced statistical methods. This complex process may help explain why data on contraceptive use dynamics are not used more often in policy and program decision-making. When decisionmakers better understand the data showing why women stop using contraception despite a preference to avoid pregnancy, they can promote policies and programs that enable continued use of and increased satisfaction with family planning services.
Blog
