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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Davida E. Becker, MSc¹, Michael Koenig, PhD¹, Young-Mi Kim, EdD, MS², Kathleen M. Cardona, DrPH³, and Freya Sonenstein, PhD³. (1) Population and Family Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, (410) 499-2267, dbecker@jhsph.edu, (2) Center for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, MD 21202, (3) Center for Adolescent Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205

Family planning and related reproductive health services are frequently used and important services for the American public. The quality of these services is crucial to their success and also influences client satisfaction and likelihood of return. Although service quality has been the subject of some past research, no previous effort has compiled this knowledge into a single source. With this goal, we conducted searches of PubMed, bibliographies of found articles, and the internet, and identified 25 studies on the quality of family planning and reproductive health services. This research can be classified as follows: 1) assessments of quality, 2) explorations of the determinants of quality, and 3) explorations of the consequences of service quality for contraceptive and reproductive outcomes. Most assessments of quality have relied on population-based surveys or client surveys to study aspects of quality such as: access/convenience, interpersonal care, physical setting, and information exchange. While interpersonal quality is generally rated highly, other elements of quality such as communication and waiting times are often rated lower. Quality varies by facility, provider, client and consultation characteristics. High quality service has been linked to contraceptive and reproductive outcomes, but there is some conflicting evidence. By identifying current knowledge/gaps in knowledge on family planning and reproductive health service quality, this review provides information useful to the design of future studies and interventions in this area.

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