Reaching First-Time Parents in the TCIHC-Supported Youth-Friendly Cities of Uttar Pradesh

Apr 29, 2020

Contributors: Kewal Sisodia, Akbar Ali Khan, Devika Varghese and Deepti Mathur

The Challenge Initiative for Healthy Cities (TCIHC) in India worked strategically through its adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH) program to reach first-time parents with informed-choice counseling and modern contraceptive services over a six-month period ending June 2019 in five cities in Uttar Pradesh (Allahabad, Firozabad, Gorakhpur, Saharanpur and Varanasi).

The first step was to make sure young first-time parents were visible, so they can receive appropriate services, including contraception, so TCIHC coached and mentored active urban Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) to identify them from their urban health index registers (UHIR). This effort included coaching to make sure the ASHAs knew how to complete their UHIRs, develop lists of women based on age and parity (i.e., number of children), and devise a priority list of young first-time parents.

At the same time, TCIHC worked to overcome provider bias to ensure providers and facility staff were aware of the latest medical guidelines and had accurate knowledge on all the methods available for young first time-parents at both the facility (medical-officer-in-charge and staff nurse) and community level (ASHA worker).

Studies have shown that low parity can be a barrier to accessing some family planning methods. Data from the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (URHI) found that 90% of the providers restricted access to female sterilization and intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD) based on the number of children that a client has. Of this, 65% of doctors required a client to at least have one child and 63% of all traditional birth attendants believed that a woman can opt for an IUCD only if she had two children or more. As a result, a plan was devised to conduct whole site orientation (WSO) – a TCIHC proven approach – on adolescent-friendly services at urban primary health centers (UPHCs) in the five cities.

Following this, the TCIHC team garnered support from city health teams to organize special fixed day static (FDS) services – another TCIHC proven approach – for first-time parents. These efforts significantly increased contraceptive uptake among first-time parents, aged 15-24, as illustrated in Figure 1. Forty-one percent of all women aged 15-24 accepting a family planning method at a UPHC were first-time parents, across the five TCI AYSRH cities, as compared with 28% in the 26 TCIHC-supported cities implementing TCI’s proven family planning solutions in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha with no special focus on AYSRH.

Upon learning about the AYSRH impact, many of the TCI cities implementing family planning only informally began adding AYSRH activities. As a result, these cities also began to exhibit increased results in reaching women 15-24 years and referring them to FDS (Figure 2). While TCIHC AYSRH cities still reached more young women, ages 20-24, (50.3%) than TCI family planning only cities (42%), the fact that there is not a large gap between the two different city groups speaks to the scalability of the AYSRH approaches.