The Effect of a Club in Making Differences in Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices on Family Planning Among Married Adolescent Girls in Urban Slums in Bangladesh
Objectives
The paper aimed to assess whether married adolescent girls’ clubs in Dhaka slums could improve knowledge, attitudes and practices related to family planning. It focused on married girls aged 14–19 and examined whether club participation reduced unmet need for contraception and increased modern method use.
Findings
Girls in intervention slums had higher knowledge of a range of modern methods, better understanding of the risks of early pregnancy and more supportive attitudes towards family planning than those in control areas. They were more likely to discuss contraception with their husbands, to see family planning as a joint responsibility and to be using a modern method, especially injectables and condoms. Unmet need for family planning was lower in intervention areas than in control slums, even after adjustment for socio-demographic differences.
Recommendations
The authors recommend scaling up married adolescent girls’ clubs in urban slums as a practical way to deliver tailored family planning information and support. They suggest integrating the club model into government and NGO programmes, training community health workers to reinforce messages and promoting spousal communication and shared responsibility for contraception. They also call for adaptation and testing of the model in rural settings and for stronger evaluation designs to confirm causal impact and inform national adolescent health and family planning strategies.
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