Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116020

Paul Hutchinson, PhD, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, Suite 2200, New Orleans, LA 70112 and Jennifer Wheeler, MPH, Department of International Health & Development, Tulane University, 1440 Canal St, Suite 2200, New Orleans, LA 70112, (504) 988-1398, jwheele1@tulane.edu.

Family planning promotion programs have often used mass media to inform and encourage audiences, while also entertaining them. Some studies have shown that mass media programs can be highly effective, though the non-random assignment of exposure and the lack of control groups often makes evaluating these programs a challenge. New insights about the strengths and limitations of mass media campaigns in public health initiatives have emerged from the development of evaluation research techniques and from a greater understanding of the mechanisms by which mass media may have direct and indirect influences on behavior change. Drawing on communication theory and experiences from previous research, this study evaluates the effects of an entertainment education campaign on the adoption of modern contraception in Tanzania using a multilevel framework. This framework simultaneously examines individual and community level effects on the adoption of modern contraception, based on the premise that individuals make decisions about family planning within the social context in which they live. Using both derived and integral variables, we examine how the contextual influences (in the form of community attitudes toward family planning) and the processes of diffusion (in the form of community exposure to mass media campaigns and community dialogue of family planning) influence adoption of modern contraception. This study uses the 1999 Tanzania Reproductive and Child Health Survey; a nationally representative survey conducted among 4,029 women aged 15-49. Village-level characteristics were collected from a concurrent survey of village leaders.

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