Community and Provider driven Social Accountability Intervention (CaPSAI) Project

Overview

The continuing burden of unmet need for family planning and contraceptives (FP/C) services and information remains a challenge. Often, contraceptive services and supplies remain inaccessible for many women and girls, and men and boys because they are simply not available and they are not affordable. For women and girls who do have access to FP/C services, they can face informal fees, disrespectful staff, few methods offered, and may lack knowledge and information about contraception.

The proposed research project builds on and contributes to a growing, but limited work that aims to better understand how social accountability and participatory processes in the context of FP/C programmes contributes to the greater achievement of sexual and reproductive health and improves quality of care and contraceptive uptake in FP/C services. The research project will show how a social accountability process in the context of FP programs/services influences contraceptive uptake and use.

Two objectives have been identified:

• Describe and examine how social accountability processes are implemented and operationalized with a focus on understanding behaviours, decision-making processes, and the barriers and facilitators of change, with a view to generalizability;
• Develop more responsive quantitative measures for social accountability and show the relationship between social accountability and uptake of contraceptives and use and other family planning behaviours.