Effectiveness of Health Education Interventions Methods to Improve Contraceptive Knowledge, Attitude, and Uptake Among Women of Reproductive Age, Ethiopia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Globally, about 600,000 women die yearly as a result of pregnancy-related causes. Access to contraceptive health education has been described as one of the crucial interventions to confront maternal mortality. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these interventions has not been systematically reviewed. OBJECTIVE: To access the effectiveness of health education intervention methods to improve contraceptive knowledge, attitude, and uptake among reproductive age group women. METHODS: This systematic review was conducted under Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines through a systematic literature search of articles published between 2010 and 2022 comprising information on the effects of health education on contraceptive knowledge, attitude, attitude, and utilization among the reproductive age group of women. The most known bibliographic databases and libraries: PubMed/Medline, Embase, and Cochrane library were used. RESULT: Eleven quasi-experimental studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria were included in the review. In a random effects model, the pooled estimate of the health education effect became 0.15 (95% CI = 0.104–0.206) at a P value of .001, and the pooled confidence intervals of the combined estimate of effect size occur on the positive side of zero. Therefore, contraceptive health education has a statistically significant positive effect on the contraceptive outcome despite variation between interventional and control groups. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: This review found that interactive communication supported by various health education delivery methods like brochures, booklets, peer educators, and the use of different behavioral change theories are more effective than the one-way and routine counseling of the family planning (FP) health education approach.