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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2002
Muslim Leaders in Guinea Convinced Koran Supports Family
Planning After Male Motivation Program
BALTIMORE—A communication program designed to get men to endorse family planning in the predominately Muslim society of Guinea succeeded in garnering some support for modern family planning methods from Muslim leaders, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP).
The program to motivate men in Guinea is part of the PRISM (Pour Renforcer le Interventions en Santé reproductive et MST/SIDA) Project, a five-year family planning and reproductive health initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The project is implemented by Management Sciences for Health (MSH), together with subcontractor JHU/CCP. JHU/CCP designed and evaluated the program on male motivation, which focused on religious leaders and married men.
According to the just-released report Impact of a Male Motivation Campaign on Family Planning Ideation and Practice in Guinea, before the program began, only 37 percent of the Muslim religious leaders involved reported knowing that the Koran or Hadith favored family planning. After the program, 93 percent reported knowing that the Koran or Hadith favors family planning. The program evaluated the responses of 98 religious leaders that attended conferences on Islam and a variety of reproductive health topics.
“The majority of the religious leaders interviewed at the end of the program said they knew of at least one verse in the Koran or Hadith that favored family planning,” said Stella Babalola, PhD, the researcher who evaluated the male motivation program and co-authored the report.
Also, those leaders that believe Islam supports family planning to space children increased from 55 percent at the beginning of the program to 94 percent at the end. While the majority still believes Islam condemns the use of family planning for limiting the number of births, the data showed some improvement in their stance on modern family planning methods. At the end of the program, more than a third of the religious leaders believed the use of family planning to limit births was acceptable under Islam, compared with one-fifth at the beginning of the program.
“We concluded from our research that it is possible to work with Muslim religious leaders to promote the use of modern family planning methods in Guinea,” said Babalola. “But our findings also demonstrated that there is still a great deal of advocacy work to be done with this group.”
Under the PRISM project, JHU/CCP is now completing an evaluation of an eighteen-month adolescent reproductive health campaign and beginning preparations for a program to promote safe motherhood and child survival.
JHU/CCP is a pioneer in the field of strategic, research-based communication for behavior change and health promotion that has helped transform the theory and practice of public health communications. With representatives in more than 30 countries, JHU/CCP has been a leader in the development of projects based on systematic needs assessments and clear strategies for positioning and presenting the benefits of health interventions to appropriate audiences.
For more information contact: Kim Martin at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6140; Fax: 410 659-6266 e-mail: press@jhuccp.org. PRESS ROOM: http://www.jhuccp.org/pressroom/
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