Abstract:
The concept of unmet need points to the gap between women’s reproductive intentions and their contraceptive behavior. Globally about 222 million women have an unmet need for family planning even though utilization of family planning services has increased over the last decades. Young married women have higher unmet need compared to older women. Researches typically generalize contraceptive use among all women however recent studies have highlighted the need to differentiate by age when studying factors that affect contraceptive use, since young women reproductive needs differ from the older women. Studies also neglected and hardly mentioned the importance of examining psychosocial factors on contraceptive use.
Objective: To assess the prevalence and associated factors for unmet need for contraception among young married women in Haramaya, Health Demographic Surveillance System site Eastern Ethiopia, from March 1-30, 2020.
Methodology: Community based cross sectional study design was employed on 550 young married women in Haramaya HDSS site. Pretest was conducted on 28 young married women. Simple random sampling technique was used to select study participants. Data was entered into EPIDATA version 3.1 and exported to STATA version 16 for analysis. Bivariable and multi variable binary logistic regression was carried out to assess associations between outcome and explanatory variables and P-Value < 0.05 was considered as significant.
Result: Total unmet need for contraception was 154 (30.3 %). Adolescents (AOR=2.02, 95% CI: 1.20-3.41), husband’s low education level (AOR=2.43, 95% CI: 1.28- 4.5), and never use of contraceptive (AOR= 3.3, 95% CI: 1.86- 5.73) were significantly and positively associated with unmet need of contraception. Husband’s supportive attitude towards contraception (AOR=0.44, 95% CI: 0.20-0.92) was negatively associated with unmet need of contraception. Conclusion: Nearly one-third of married young women had an unmet need for contraception. Unmet need for contraceptive use is still high indicating more to be done to ensure that FP programs are effective and meeting the needs of young women. This study showed unmet need adolescents, husband’s level of education, never use of contraceptives, and husbands supportive attitude towards contraception were factors associated with unmet need.
