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Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders

BACKGROUND: Twenty years after acknowledging the importance of joint responsibilities and male participation in maternal health programs, most health care systems in low income countries continue to face challenges in involving men. We explored the reasons for men’s resistance to the adoption of a m...

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Autores principales: Aborigo, Raymond A., Reidpath, Daniel D., Oduro, Abraham R., Allotey, Pascale
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5749010/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29291711
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1641-9
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author Aborigo, Raymond A.
Reidpath, Daniel D.
Oduro, Abraham R.
Allotey, Pascale
author_facet Aborigo, Raymond A.
Reidpath, Daniel D.
Oduro, Abraham R.
Allotey, Pascale
author_sort Aborigo, Raymond A.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Twenty years after acknowledging the importance of joint responsibilities and male participation in maternal health programs, most health care systems in low income countries continue to face challenges in involving men. We explored the reasons for men’s resistance to the adoption of a more proactive role in pregnancy care and their enduring influence in the decision making process during emergencies. METHODS: Ten focus group discussions were held with opinion leaders (chiefs, elders, assemblymen, leaders of women groups) and 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with healthcare workers (District Directors of Health, Medical Assistants in-charge of health centres, and district Public Health Nurses and Midwives). The interviews and discussions were audio recorded, transcribed into English and imported into NVivo 10 for content analysis. RESULTS: As heads of the family, men control resources, consult soothsayers to determine the health seeking or treatment for pregnant women, and serve as the final authority on where and when pregnant women should seek medical care. Beyond that, they have no expectation of any further role during antenatal care and therefore find it unnecessary to attend clinics with their partners. There were conflicting views about whether men needed to provide any extra support to their pregnant partners within the home. Health workers generally agreed that men provided little or no support to their partners. Although health workers had facilitated the formation of father support groups, there was little evidence of any impact on antenatal support. CONCLUSIONS: In patriarchal settings, the role of men can be complex and social and cultural traditions may conflict with public health recommendations. Initiatives to promote male involvement should focus on young men and use chiefs and opinion leaders as advocates to re-orient men towards more proactive involvement in ensuring the health of their partners. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1641-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-57490102018-01-05 Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders Aborigo, Raymond A. Reidpath, Daniel D. Oduro, Abraham R. Allotey, Pascale BMC Pregnancy Childbirth Research Article BACKGROUND: Twenty years after acknowledging the importance of joint responsibilities and male participation in maternal health programs, most health care systems in low income countries continue to face challenges in involving men. We explored the reasons for men’s resistance to the adoption of a more proactive role in pregnancy care and their enduring influence in the decision making process during emergencies. METHODS: Ten focus group discussions were held with opinion leaders (chiefs, elders, assemblymen, leaders of women groups) and 16 in-depth interviews were conducted with healthcare workers (District Directors of Health, Medical Assistants in-charge of health centres, and district Public Health Nurses and Midwives). The interviews and discussions were audio recorded, transcribed into English and imported into NVivo 10 for content analysis. RESULTS: As heads of the family, men control resources, consult soothsayers to determine the health seeking or treatment for pregnant women, and serve as the final authority on where and when pregnant women should seek medical care. Beyond that, they have no expectation of any further role during antenatal care and therefore find it unnecessary to attend clinics with their partners. There were conflicting views about whether men needed to provide any extra support to their pregnant partners within the home. Health workers generally agreed that men provided little or no support to their partners. Although health workers had facilitated the formation of father support groups, there was little evidence of any impact on antenatal support. CONCLUSIONS: In patriarchal settings, the role of men can be complex and social and cultural traditions may conflict with public health recommendations. Initiatives to promote male involvement should focus on young men and use chiefs and opinion leaders as advocates to re-orient men towards more proactive involvement in ensuring the health of their partners. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1641-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5749010/ /pubmed/29291711 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1641-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Aborigo, Raymond A.
Reidpath, Daniel D.
Oduro, Abraham R.
Allotey, Pascale
Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title_full Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title_fullStr Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title_full_unstemmed Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title_short Male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
title_sort male involvement in maternal health: perspectives of opinion leaders
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5749010/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29291711
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12884-017-1641-9
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