Social Support, Exposure to Family Planning Messaging, and Family Planning Use among Women in Angola

Divya Vohra, University of California, Berkeley
Laura Harris, University of California, Berkeley
Ndola Prata, University of California, Berkeley

Little is known about the pathways through which social support and exposure to family planning messaging might act together to promote contraceptive use. Using data from a population-based survey of women of reproductive age in Luanda Province, Angola, we explore associations between social support and family planning use, and between exposure to family planning messaging and family planning use. We hypothesize that exposure to family planning messaging may confound or modify the relationship between social support and family planning use, and that women with both exposure to messaging and strong social support will be even more likely to use family planning than women with only one of these factors. In preliminary analyses, we find that social support and exposure to family planning messaging each have strong associations with family planning use, which suggests that efforts to build social support for contraceptive use in these communities could result in more uptake of family planning.