Planning & Designing Reproductive Health Intervention Framework for Young Married Couples in India: Using Systematic Review

A community intervention framework was developed based on systematic reviews of existing evidence showing what is working in the low and middle income countries for improving reproductive and sexual health of young married couples. The systematic review helped us to design intervention framework for young married women in India in a comprehensive manner targeting early and repeated pregnancies and utilization of antenatal, delivery, post-partum, contraception and abortion services.

The focus was on research studies and evaluation reports of different community level initiatives in improving access to contraception, pregnancy care and safe abortion services by young married couples, where women were in the age-group of 15–24 years in low and middle income countries.

The findings from the systematic reviews shows engaging husband, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, community leaders and community health workers are effective in enhancing young women's reproductive health outcomes. This finding helped to plan and design the intervention framework according to Indian setting. Further, the newly designed intervention framework was implemented in the rural areas of India to improve sexual and reproductive health of the young married women.

The systematic review helped to design intervention framework targeting empowering individuals, mobilizing families and communities, and sensitizing community health workers to improve access to reproductive health services among young married couples in LMICs in a comprehensive manner.