M.Cur. / A study on promotion strategies for voluntary surgical contraception in Family Planning Clinic of Swaziland. There is under-utilization of voluntary surgical contraception in Family Planning Clinic of Swaziland. The clinic started to operate in 1995 up to date, there are only 88 clients who had been operated on. The aim of this study is to explore and describe factors, which contribute to client satisfaction with this method, so that promotion strategies will be developed to increase the demand. Purposive sampling, which is a probability method was utilized to select the sample. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the data from 10 participants - five males and five females. The researcher discovered that participants are satisfied with voluntary surgical contraception. The reasons for their satisfaction are because of the good counseling, benefits, positive attitude of the service provider and technical competence of the doctor. Information, education, communication and promotion strategies were then developed based on the themes identified. The information, education and communication strategy is given by satisfied clients in terms of interpersonal communication, mass media and also advocating strategy.

The problem of the investigation was to determine the knowledge gain and the attitude change in females attending a contraception education program conducted by the Denton County Chapter of the Planned Parenthood Association of Northeast Texas. The sample population consisted of 75 females attending a Planned Parenthood contraception education program. A pre-test, post-test, and delayed test format was utilized in the study. The study concluded that the contraception education program did not significantly increase contraception knowledge of females attending Planned Parenthood. The investigation also concluded that the program did not significantly change the contraception attitudes of females in the investigation. However, there was a significant contraception knowledge gain one month following initial program exposure.

This dissertation consists of three essays on Health Economics. Chapter 1 analyzes the effects of abortion costs for minors on abortions, sexual behavior, and births. We exploit a 2015 change in parental involvement (PI) laws in Spain as a natural experiment in costs, together with rich population-level data on abortions and births. Using the exact date of teenager birth, we first document a decrease in abortions by 17-years-olds using a difference-in-difference comparison with 18-years-olds, consistent with the law that targeted Spanish minors. Using bunching methods from the Public Finance literature, we show evidence of temporal displacement. Some 17-years-old delayed their abortion and waited until they turned 18 and thereby avoided involving their parents. Second, we consider how the law change may have influenced health-related behaviors, finding implicitly that sexual behaviors changed so as to reduce the likelihood of becoming pregnant before turning 18 (and thereby internalized the cost of parental involvement). This is seen in the permanent shift in the number of abortions at age 18 that exists after removing the temporal displacement abortions around the age 18 threshold and an increase in the number of births to mothers who were pregnant at age 17. This paper finds that an important dimension of risky youth behavior responds to incentives contained in parental notification laws. Chapter 2 analyzes the effects of abortion costs on sex-selection by exploiting a 2010 abortion liberalization in Spain and the difference in son-preferences by nationality and child order documented in the literature. We show using a difference-in-difference comparison a significant increase in the fraction of boys for Chinese parents giving birth to their third child or above relative to children born of Spanish parents. Consistent with the literature, we do not find any effect on the fraction of boys for the first or the second child. Using the provincial number of abortion centers per person as a measure of access to abortion, we show, at the correlation level, that the effects come from those provinces with higher access to abortions. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that birth outcomes of Chinese girls who are the third children, and thus are now more likely to be ``wanted'' after the reform, improve. Gestational weeks increase, and the chance of being born prematurely decrease although our evidence suffers from lack of power. Finally, chapter 3 analyzes the effects of a universal, unconditional cash transfer announcement on birth outcomes by exploiting the 2007 cheque bebé policy in Spain that provided 2,500 euros per child to all mothers giving birth immediately after its announcement (Jul 2007). We use a difference-in-difference analysis comparing those born before and after the announcement. By exploiting the timing of the policy announcement we can avoid the composition effects caused by the incentives to have children generated by the policy. We show that the birth weight of those children born after the policy announcement (Sept-Dec) significantly improved relative to those born before (Apr-Jun) using previous years to control for the seasonal effects. Moreover, we provide suggestive evidence that those who are more vulnerable, as measured by the average municipality income level, parents' marital status, or parents' age, experience the most substantial improvements on birth weight.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

Thesis. 1975. B.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Bibliography: leaves 74-75. / by Kenneth J. Isaacson. / B.S.

This dissertation examines the roots of birth control's legitimacy in the United States. Americans were early adopters of fertility control: between 1790 and 1940, the average number of children born into U.S. families fell from seven to around two. During this period there were no major advances in contraceptive technology and very few outspoken advocates for reproductive rights. What changed were Americans' intimate ideas about the place of childrearing in a good life. The study uses letters, press items, and philanthropic field reports from the early twentieth century--when birthrates and birth control first became major civic issues in the U.S.--to uncover that transition, which has long perplexed scholars. Rather than focusing on the role of vocal activists or socioeconomic change, the dissertation emphasizes the changing "moral economy" of childbearing, as perceived by Americans addressing their own views and those of their peers and forebearers. It shows how economic calculations surrounding childbearing were embedded in matrices of morally-mediated ideas about progress, nature, God, and health--and how shifts in those ideas gave rise to a private, grassroots consensus which gradually nullified all attempts to make birth control illegal or taboo. The analysis pays special attention to the role of ideas about time. Birth control gained legitimacy, first, as Americans became progressively less concerned with eternal chains of being and more with the material present; and second, as they reevaluated birth control's place in history, impressionistically reframing a marker of collective decadence as a sign of individual modernity. Seeing the birth control movement through these Americans' eyes--as a quiet, gradual, furtive movement of living women (and men) who were not necessarily outspoken, feminist, or even civically active--helps us understand Americans' reproductive interests as they understood them, and the potential connections of everyday moral action to lasting historical consequence.

Having largely achieved the goal of "controlling population quantity," and faced with slowing economic growth, serious demographic problems, and the changes brought about by the deepening marketization of Chinese society, China's central-level leaders have, in recent years, turned their attention to the lesser known twin objective of their population policy, "improving population quality." To this end, they have introduced program reform aimed at improving the quality of services. They have adopted an eclectic approach to program reform, drawing selectively on global discourses and practices on sexual and reproductive health and rights and at the same time relying on their own model of experimental governance, namely, conducting "pilot experiments" in carefully selected sites. Developments at the central-level have been a subject of scholarly attention, but until now, relatively little attention has been paid to grassroots implementation, making it difficult to assess the degree to which practice has in fact changed. This dissertation examines how global discourses and practices on sexual and reproductive health and rights, articulated in global forums and consensus documents, have been taken on, interpreted, and experienced by people at the grassroots level in China. It is based principally on six months of fieldwork, July - December 2009, in Deqing, a rural county, located in the northern part of Zhejiang Province, in the Jiangnan region of China. Deqing is a pilot site for the introduction of "client-centered" approaches to implement the population program. Data were derived from participant observation, analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews with 17 local-level providers working at the county, township, and village-levels in clinical and administrative capacities, and 17 married women of reproductive age residing in three townships. I documented many innovative approaches that the local program developed to promote "quality service" and its various components, such as "information," "choice," and "rights," as they understood them. I also found that the range of services that the program now provides extends well beyond birth planning and that in addition to its core demographic, married women of reproductive age, the program now targets new populations including those that have been a focus of global attention in recent years such as migrants and adolescents. For the populations that the program targets, migrants being a notable exception, the mode of governance has begun to shift from direct to more indirect means, the latter being considered a more efficient way to implement the program in the current environment. Unlike earlier efforts to "control population quantity," which were often forcefully implemented and fiercely resisted, efforts to "improve population quality," have received a warm reception by providers and clients alike in Deqing. While there are some continuities, overall, the changes that have been introduced are an explicit departure from past practice. Taken together, these findings contribute to ongoing debates regarding the dynamics and effects of globalization.

There is a high prevalence of nonuse and imperfect use of oral contraceptives (OCs) that can result in multiple consequences, one of which is unintended pregnancy. Deposit contracting may be promising for increasing OC adherence, however, there is little research testing deposit contracting on oral contraceptive adherence. In addition, studies have concluded that young women with elevated stress symptoms are at risk of contraceptive nonuse. Purposes of this thesis were to evaluate effects of deposit contracting on OC use for women, and the relation of stress to timely pill consumption. In addition, reliability was measured between the different measurements used to determine OC usage in the study. We recruited 10 college-aged female participants who were distributed into three cohorts. During baseline phase, participant’s deposit returns were based on submitting daily “selfies” (optional), weekly OC blister packs photos, weekly completed PSS-4 forms, and weekly completed pill diaries on time. During the deposit contracting phase, participants were to continue submitting all the weekly reports, but the deposit returns were contingent also upon submitting daily “selfies” on time. Results of latency of pill consumption and percentage of imperfect use showed that deposit contracting was effective in decreasing percentages of OC imperfect use, decreasing the latency in pill consumption, and increasing OC adherence for participants with stress. Results of the study also indicated that reliability was mixed between the different form of data collections on OC adherence.