Friday sermons, family planning and gender-equity attitudes and actions: Evidence from Jordan

Objective: To assess the effects of an intervention designed to enhance Jordanian religious leaders’ communication about family health. 

Methods: Programmatic effects on religious leaders were evaluated with a panel study design; a total of 245 men and 145 women participated in both baseline and endline surveys in 2011. To assess effects on mosque attendees, the research team used a nonequivalent, post-intervention only with control group design; 431 interviews were completed in the intervention site and 426 in the control site in 2012.

Findings: Although religious leaders in the intervention site reported higher levels of preaching and teaching about the family health topics at endline than at baseline, their congregants were neither more likely than control congregants to report that they had heard such messages over the previous six-month period nor to register more positive attitudes about the topics, contrary to the anticipated outcome. Yet, intervention congregants compared with controls were more likely to take action related to family planning (odds ratio: 7.9, p<=0.0001) and gender equity (odd ratio: 2.96; p<0.10). These findings suggest that religious leaders who took part in the intervention compared with non-participants were more effective in message dissemination. 

Conclusions:  Despite the mixed findings, the congregants of trained religious leaders who did recall the messages were more likely to report taking relevant actions.  Thus, the findings support continuation of this program once the changes set forth in this presentation are made to the program.