Enhancing Male Participation in Interventions to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy

Summary

Globally, 41% of all pregnancies are unintended, increasing risk for maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Most unintended pregnancies occur in the context of contraceptive non-use or failure. Women with husbands who are not supportive of contraception are more likely to report contraceptive non-use, and women with sexually abusive husbands are more likely to report contraceptive failure. This highlights the need for family planning (FP) interventions that engage both women and men, focus on eliminating marital sexual violence (MSV) and promote use of effective contraceptives including long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). Rural India, with some of the lowest rates of contraception and highest rates of marital violence globally, offers an important context to test such interventions, with global implications. Prior research from this team documents promise of the original CHARM intervention, a gender equity (GE) FP intervention engaging men and delivered by male health providers over 3 months. This intervention improved contraceptive use and reduced likelihood of MSV, but demonstrated no reduction in unintended pregnancy; additionally, it demonstrated high participation from men (91%) but less from couples (51%), largely due to women's discomfort with a male provider. Poor reach to women and provision of only short-acting contraceptives, more vulnerable to contraceptive failure, may have compromised an effect on unintended pregnancy outcomes. Based on these findings, CHARM2 includes CHARM sessions for men AND parallel women-focused GE+FP sessions delivered by a female provider and inclusive of broader contraceptive options, including LARC. This study seeks a) to implement CHARM2, b) to evaluate its impact on contraceptive use, unintended pregnancy, and MSV with rural couples in India, and c) to assess its potential for sustainability in rural India, using implementation science methods.

To evaluate the impact of CHARM2, a 2-armed cluster randomized controlled trial will be conducted with up to N=1200 married couples from 20 geographic clusters (n=50-60 couples per cluster) in rural India. Participants will receive CHARM2 or the standard of care, which will involve community health workers offering pills/condoms and linking women to public health clinics. Outcomes will be assessed via pregnancy testing and surveys at baseline, 9 \& 18-month follow-ups. Implementation science methods will assess the quality, scalability, and replicability of CHARM2 for uptake by rural health care systems (i.e., sustainability).

Conditions

• Contraception

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

The CHARM2 Intervention

CHARM2 intervention will involve gender, culture \& contextually-tailored family planning and gender equity counseling.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Population Council

  collaborator OTHER

• University of California, San Diego

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Anita Raj, PhD · University of California, San Diego

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-06-07

Primary Completion

2020-12-16

Completion

2020-12-16

Countries

• India