Beyond Bias - Reducing Provider Bias Towards Adolescents to Increase Contraception Take-Up in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan

Summary

Beyond Bias will evaluate the impact of an intervention designed to reduce family planning provider bias towards young, unmarried, and nulliparous women in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan. The intervention has three components: 1) a summit that includes impactful stories told to and by family planning providers that highlight the consequences of provider bias, 2) a forum for continued communication between providers, and 3) a rewards program where clinics in which providers exhibit less biased client interactions or who have improved the most towards this end will be rewarded with social recognition and a ceremony.

Half of the eligible clinics in each country (233 in total) are randomly assigned to receive the intervention, while the remaining half serves as control. The objective of the evaluation is to estimate the impact of the intervention on a range of outcomes related to quality of family planning care among young, unmarried, and nulliparous women. The investigators hypothesize that the intervention will increase the share of young, unmarried, and nulliparous women who received counseling on a range of methods, counseling on long acting methods, and who received their preferred method.

The investigators will collect four types of data to evaluate the intervention: 1) provider surveys, 2) mystery clients' visits, 3) direct observations of client-provider interactions, and 4) qualitative interviews with clients, providers, and implementors.

Conditions

• Family Planning Services

Interventions

OTHER

Beyond Bias Treatment

The intervention has three components: 1) a summit that includes impactful stories told to and by family planning providers that highlight the consequences of provider bias, 2) a forum for continued communication between providers, and 3) a rewards program where clinics in which providers exhibit less biased client interactions or who have improved the most towards this end will be rewarded with social recognition and a ceremony.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of California, Los Angeles

  collaborator OTHER

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Pathfinder International

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• RAND

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Zachary Wagner, Ph.D · RAND

• Corrina Moucheraud, Ph.D · University of California, Los Angeles

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Max Age

24 Years

Sex

FEMALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-09-01

Primary Completion

2021-09-01

Completion

2022-10-14

Countries

• United States

Study Locations