Evaluating the impact of Marie Stopes International’s digital family planning counselling application on the uptake of long-acting and permanent methods of contraception in Vietnam and Ethiopia: a study protocol for a multi-country cluster randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Maintaining quality of care in family planning (FP) counselling in low-resource settings is challenging. Job aids can help providers give more accurate and client-specific advice but require a provider to use them effectively and consistently. Marie Stopes International (MSI) have designed the tablet-computer based Digital Counselling Application (DCA), which prompts structured, supportive, client-specific and unbiased FP counselling. We hypothesise that a systematic exploration of clients’ fertility intentions, medical eligibility and preferences will increase their uptake of long acting and permanent methods of contraception (LAPMs). METHODS/DESIGN: We will conduct a two-armed, parallel, cluster randomised control trial across all MSI clinics (clusters) in Ethiopia (24) and Vietnam (11), randomising 18 clinics to the intervention group and 17 to the control group. Intervention providers will attend a two-day DCA-use training programme, and use DCA in their FP counselling sessions. Usual care providers will counsel clients as before. We aim to recruit 75 clients who have had FP counselling per clinic (2625 total), following them up via two telephone interviews, initially within 2 days and then at 4 months. The primary outcome is defined as the proportion of clients who report choosing a LAPM following FP counselling and will include switchers (FP counselling clients who switch from using any other FP method) and adopters (FP counselling clients who adopt any FP method having not previously been using one). We will also collect secondary outcomes at the initial follow-up (including the proportion of clients reporting being recommended a LAPM by a provider and a range of measures of client experience and satisfaction) and at the 4-month follow-up (including a range of measures of continuation rates for different FP method types). In the intervention arm, we will also conduct mixed-methods sampling to assess how providers use DCA (using an observational survey of provider–client interactions), and understand users’ experiences of receiving and giving DCA-based FP counselling (through in-depth interviews). DISCUSSION: This trial will provide novel information on the feasibility and acceptability of health worker delivered FP counselling using DCA, with robust evidence on its effectiveness at increasing the uptake of LAPMs in low-resource settings. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN, ISRCTN11040557. Registered on 2 March 2017 (retrospectively registered). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13063-018-2815-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.