Developing a culturally appropriate family planning program for the Navrongo experiment

This article describes the first six months of the strategic planning process to develop a culturally appropriate community health and family planning program for a traditional community in a district of northern Ghana, served by the Navrongo Health Research Centre. To explain the context within which fertility decisions are made, this article describes the district's severe ecological, social, economic, and health constraints to family planning. It discusses related programmatic obstacles and presents the strategies developed to respond to them. A system of care has been developed that is closely coordinated with traditional leaders and communication networks. Management systems support outreach workers by emphasizing the importance of peer leadership, supervisory support, and community liaison in the implementation of village-based services. A large-scale experiment will be fielded to test the demographic impact of this approach.

The Navrongo Community Health and Family Planning Project

In 1994, an experiment was launched by the Navrongo Health Research Centre that will test the demographic impact of community health and family planning services in a rural, traditional area of northern Ghana. While exhaustive social research has been directed to clarifying societal constraints to reproductive change, relatively little is known about how African cultural characteristics can be a resource to family planning programs. This study will clarify ways in which cultural resources of a traditional African society can be used in efforts to foster reproductive change. This article reviews characteristics of the study population, the design of the Navrongo experiment, and the research plan. The Navrongo Project will be the first African experimental trial of the demographic impact of family planning.