Author: Pankaj Chowdhury


Family planning (FP) plays a critical role in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and short intervals between pregnancies. It also significantly improves maternal and child health outcomes and contributes to poverty reduction by enhancing educational and economic opportunities for women. Therefore, assessing the need and demand for family planning is essential for evaluating the coverage and effectiveness of FP programs, understanding the overall potential demand for these services, and identifying gaps in service provision. Researchers typically use three key indicators to measure the need and demand for family planning: (1) Unmet Need for Family Planning, (2) Met Need for Family Planning, (3) Total Demand for Family Planning and (4). Demand satisfied. Understanding these indicators is crucial for developing and implementing effective family planning programs and ensuring comprehensive service provision.

Unmet Need for Family Planning

Generally, the unmet need for family planning refers to the condition where women who want to avoid pregnancy or delay the next birth are not using any method of contraception. Mathematically, the unmet need for family planning refers to the proportion of women who meet one or more of the following criteria: Women who are not pregnant, not postpartum amenorrhoeic, are considered fecund, and want to postpone their next birth for two or more years or stop childbearing altogether, but are not using any contraceptive method, or women who have a mistimed or unwanted current pregnancy or women who are postpartum amenorrhoeic and whose last birth within the past two years was mistimed or unwanted.

Unmet need for family planning can be broadly classified into two categories: Unmet Need for Spacing, and Unmet Need for Limiting. Moreover, some of the main reasons related to the unmet need for family planning include lack of information or misconceptions about contraceptive methods, side effects or health concerns related to contraceptive methods, cultural or religious beliefs that discourage contraception, partner opposition or lack of support from the spouse or family members and, limited access to health services and contraceptives. The unmet need for family planning highlights the discrepancy between women’s reproductive intentions and their contraceptive behaviour. This indicator is crucial for monitoring progress toward universal access to reproductive health.

Unmet Need for Spacing

The unmet need for spacing refers to women who wish to postpone their next pregnancy but are not using any contraceptive method. This category typically includes young mothers who want to wait a few years before having another child, newly married couples who want to wait before starting their family, women who have experienced health issues with previous pregnancies and need time to recover, women with young children who want to wait until their existing children are older before having more.

Unmet Need for Limiting

Unmet need for limiting refers to women who do not want any more children but are not using any method of contraception. This category generally includes older women who have reached or exceeded their desired family size, women with health concerns that make further pregnancies risky, women with socioeconomic reasons who cannot afford to have more children, and women who have experienced complications in previous pregnancies or childbirths.

Met Need for Family Planning

Met Need for Family Planning refers to the proportion of women who want to avoid pregnancy and are using contraceptive methods effectively. It is a measure of how well family planning services are meeting the needs of women who wish to delay or prevent childbirth. This indicator is essential for assessing the coverage and effectiveness of family planning programs.

Demand for Family Planning

Demand for Family Planning includes both the met need (women who are using contraception) and the unmet need (women who want to avoid pregnancy but are not using any method of contraception). It measures the total desire for family planning among women of reproductive age. This broader measure helps to understand the overall potential demand for family planning services and to identify gaps in service provision.

Demand Satisfied

The “Demand Satisfied” is a key indicator used to evaluate the effectiveness of family planning services. It is calculated by dividing the Met Need for Family Planning by the Total Demand for Family Planning, then multiplying by 100 to convert it into a percentage. This metric shows the proportion of the total demand for family planning that is being met through the use of contraceptive methods.

Implications

The study of the need and demand for family planning has significant implications in the domain of public health and socio-economic development. It helps women prevent unplanned and closely spaced pregnancies that can lead to adverse health outcomes for both mother and child, including higher risks of maternal mortality, infant mortality, and low birth weight, unplanned pregnancies can strain family resources, limiting the ability to invest in each child’s health, education, and overall well-being, unmet need for contraception can perpetuate cycles of poverty and hinder women’s ability to participate fully in the workforce and public life, high levels of unmet need contribute to rapid population growth, which can exacerbate issues like resource depletion, environmental degradation, and challenges in providing education, healthcare, and employment opportunities.

Addressing Unmet Need

To address the unmet need for family planning, comprehensive strategies should include such as improving access to a wide range of contraceptive methods, enhancing education and awareness programs about family planning and reproductive health, training healthcare providers to offer better counselling and services, engaging communities to address cultural and religious barriers, involving men and boys in family planning discussions to foster supportive environments, strengthening health systems to ensure consistent availability of contraceptives and reproductive health services.

 


 

Tags: unmet need meaning in family planning, causes of unmet need meaning for family planning, how to reduce unmet need for family planning, family planning methods

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