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For Immediate Release November 16, 1998
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Hopkins Report: Men Can Help Millions of Women
Avoid Reproductive Health Problems
In many developing countries men play important, often dominant roles in decisions crucial to women's reproductive health. Rather than being part of the problem, however, many men are ready to be a part of the solution, new surveys suggest. Men can help solve some of the world's most pressing reproductive health problems, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
In the past, men have often blocked women's access to health information and services, controlling finances, transportation and other resources, according to the study, Reproductive Health: New Perspectives on Men's Participation, published in the journal Population Reports. Recent findings, however, "suggest that men's reproductive health behavior is ready to change."
Men in developing countries are more interested in family planning and reproductive health than often assumed, but they need communication and services directed specifically to them, according to Hopkins researchers. In 8 of 12 developing countries—mostly in Africa—surveys find that at least 70% of men approve of family planning and that, increasingly, men make reproductive decisions together with their wives. In the past they often made decisions for their wives instead of with them.
The report, published by the Johns Hopkins Population Information Program, says reproductive health programs can encourage men to:
- Use contraceptives and endorse their sexual partners' use of contraception, thus helping to prevent an estimated 75 million unintended pregnancies a year. Two of every five births are unintended.
- Use condoms and help slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is now spreading faster among women than men in some regions.
- Seek information, counseling, and treatment to help reduce the estimated 330 million cases of curable sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) each year.
- Encourage the 100 million woman in developing countries who say they do not want to become pregnant but who are not using contraception to seek family planning advice. Studies show that husbands' negative opinions—actual or perceived—often hold back women who want family planning.
- Foster safe motherhood by learning about pre- and post-natal care, thus helping to save many of the 585,000 women who die each year from complications of pregnancy, childbirth, and unsafe abortion.
If men are ready to take more positive roles in reproductive health, why have some efforts to involve them fallen short? Until now, most reproductive health programs in developing countries have focused on married women. Many programs that have tried to include men "have been weak and too brief or based on an incomplete understanding of men's motivations, couples' interactions, and what engages men," according to the report.
The report urges programs to adopt these key approaches:
- Use mass media and other forms of communication to encourage couples to discuss contraceptive use and other reproductive health decisions. Messages in the mass media also can address men's specific concerns and give them positive models to follow. Reach out to men in the workplace, at sports events, and wherever else they gather.
- Offer men a range of health services including screening for STDs; family planning advice and contraception, especially vasectomy and condoms; and possibly counseling and treatment for infertility. Reproductive health care providers should counsel men, like women, with respect and sensitivity.
- Reach out to young and unmarried men and address their reproductive health needs, including STDs, sexuality, and avoiding unintended pregnancies.
- Design services that take account of gender differences, and encourage greater equity between women and men. In many countries gender differences make it difficult for men and women even to discuss family planning, according to the report.
Reproductive Health: New Perspectives on Men's Participation was prepared by Megan Drennan, M.P.H., a writer with the Population Information Program. Population Reports is an international review journal of important issues in population, family planning, and related health matters. It is published four times a year in four languages by the Population Information Program at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs for more than 170,000 family planning and other health professionals worldwide, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID administers the US foreign assistance program, providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.
For more information contact: Stephen Goldstein at http://www.jhuccp.org/ 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6300; Fax: 410 659-6266; e-mail PopRepts@jhuccp.org.
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