Milken Institute School of Public Health Poster Presentations (Marvin Center & Video)
"It allows you to challenge your beliefs": Examining medical students reactions to abortion training at Columbia University Medical Center
Document Type
Poster
Abstract Category
Prevention and Community Health
Keywords
abortion, curricula, medical student, qualitative
Publication Date
Spring 5-1-2019
Abstract
As of 2010, 146 million women worldwide who were married or in a union had an unmet need for family planning. Increasing uptake of modern contraceptive use is a process of social change that is mediated in important ways by social networks. We present descriptive results of a study of social networks and social influences on modern contraceptive use in rural Kilifi County in Kenya's Coast Region. To inform the social network survey, we conducted formative research with residents in the two communities (n=163). We selected them to represent earlier and later stages in the processes of social change (one with a low modern contraceptive prevalence rate (MCPR) and the other with a high MCPR). We subsequently designed a survey and collected data via whole-networks. We surveyed men, women and adolescents (n=666) in the low MCPR village and (n=1309) in the high MCPR village. More participants in the low MCPR village reported that contraception use causes infertility (29% versus 12%). Participants in the low MCPR village also reported twice as many social ties with whom they discuss family planning compared to the high MCPR village suggesting a denser social network (0.0007 versus 0.0023). We found similar findings when participants reported discussing child spacing. In denser networks with more social ties, negative beliefs about family planning can be spread more easily. Study insights have implications for intervention strategies aimed at increasing modern contraceptive use, and for the design of future studies intended to produce an even deeper understanding of these processes.
Creative Commons License
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Open Access
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"It allows you to challenge your beliefs": Examining medical students reactions to abortion training at Columbia University Medical Center
As of 2010, 146 million women worldwide who were married or in a union had an unmet need for family planning. Increasing uptake of modern contraceptive use is a process of social change that is mediated in important ways by social networks. We present descriptive results of a study of social networks and social influences on modern contraceptive use in rural Kilifi County in Kenya's Coast Region. To inform the social network survey, we conducted formative research with residents in the two communities (n=163). We selected them to represent earlier and later stages in the processes of social change (one with a low modern contraceptive prevalence rate (MCPR) and the other with a high MCPR). We subsequently designed a survey and collected data via whole-networks. We surveyed men, women and adolescents (n=666) in the low MCPR village and (n=1309) in the high MCPR village. More participants in the low MCPR village reported that contraception use causes infertility (29% versus 12%). Participants in the low MCPR village also reported twice as many social ties with whom they discuss family planning compared to the high MCPR village suggesting a denser social network (0.0007 versus 0.0023). We found similar findings when participants reported discussing child spacing. In denser networks with more social ties, negative beliefs about family planning can be spread more easily. Study insights have implications for intervention strategies aimed at increasing modern contraceptive use, and for the design of future studies intended to produce an even deeper understanding of these processes.
Comments
Presented at Research Days 2019.