Awareness about contraception among pregnant adolescents in a district in South India

---

Original Article

Author Details : Chandrika Doddihal*, S M Katli

Volume : 6, Issue : 2, Year : 2019

Article Page : 55-58

https://doi.org/10.18231/j.jchm.2019.012

Suggest article by email

Get Permission

---

Abstract

Context: In recent decades adolescent pregnancy has become an important health issue in a great number of countries both developed and developing. Pregnancy in young women occurs as a result of early marriages and most importantly due to lack of awareness about contraception or its inappropriate usage.
Aims: 1.To assess the contraceptive knowledge among pregnant adolescents and; 2.To study the factors influencing contraceptive knowledge.
Settings and Design: A cross sectional study in a rural field practice area of a medical college which is resettlement area. The study was conducted in a period of 6 months
Methods and Materials: Study was conducted in 144 rural adolescent pregnant girls to know about their awareness about contraception and its socio-demographic drivers through a semi structured pretested questionnaire.
Statistical Analysis Used: Numerical variables were analyzed by means and standard deviations and categorical data were summarized using percentages. Chi square test was used to find the association between various socio demographic variables and awareness about contraception.
Results: Mean age of the participants was 17.8 years, were housewives and belonged to lower socio-economic status. Half of them were aware about some method of contraception and television was the most common source of awareness. However, none used any method of contraception.
Conclusions: Contraceptive awareness among married adolescent pregnant girls is very low and is majorly through television. Further mass media and health educational activities targeting adolescents in difficult areas are required to enhance contraceptive awareness.

Keywords: Contraception, Pregnant adolescents, India.

How to cite : Doddihal C, Katli S M, Awareness about contraception among pregnant adolescents in a district in South India. J Community Health Manag 2019;6(2):55-58

This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.