Results From the Uganda Self-Injection Best Practices Project

Self-care reproductive health innovations are increasingly valued as practices that enable women to manage their fertility with greater autonomy. While self-care, by definition, takes place beyond the clinic walls, many self-care practices nonetheless require initial or follow up visits to a health worker. Access to self-care hinges on the extent to which health care workers who serve as gatekeepers find the innovation appropriate and practical. Self-injection of subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) is being introduced and scaled in many countries. In late 2018, health workers in Uganda began offering self-injection of DMPA-SC in the public sector, and this study examines health workers’ views on the acceptability and feasibility of training women to self-inject. We conducted in-person interviews with 120 health workers active in the self-injection program to better understand provider practices, program satisfaction, and their views on feasibility. A subset of 77 health workers participated in in-depth interviews. Quantitative data was analyzed using Stata (v14) software, and chi square and student t tests used to measure between group differences. Qualitative data was analyzed using Atlas.ti, employing an iterative coding process, to identify key themes that resonated. The majority of health workers were very satisfied with the self-injection program and reported it was moderately easy to integrate self-injection training into routine service delivery. They identified lack of time to train clients in the clinic setting, lack of materials among community health workers, and client fear of self-injection as key challenges. Community health workers were less likely to report time challenges and indicated higher levels of satisfaction and greater ease in offering self-injection services. The relatively high acceptability of the self-injection program among health workers is promising; however, strategies to overcome feasibility challenges, such as workload constraints that limit the ability to offer self-injection training, are needed to expand service delivery to more women interested in this new self-care innovation. As self-injection programs are introduced and scaled across settings, there is a need for evidence regarding how self-care innovations can be designed and implemented in ways that are practical for health workers, while optimizing women’s successful adoption and use.

Contraceptive self-injection (SI) is a new self-care practice with potential to transform women’s family planning access by putting a popular method, injectable contraception, directly into the hands of users. Research shows that SI is feasible and acceptable; evidence regarding how to design and implement SI programs under real-world conditions is still needed. This evaluation examined women’s experiences when self-injection of subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) was introduced in Uganda alongside other contraceptive options in the context of informed choice. We conducted structured survey interviews with 958 randomly selected SI clients trained in three districts in 2019. SI clients demonstrated their injection technique on a model to permit an assessment of injection proficiency. A randomly selected subset of 200 were re-interviewed 10–17 months post-training to understand resupply experiences, waste disposal practices and continuation. Finally, we conducted survey interviews with a random sample of 200 clients who participated in training but declined to self-inject. Data were analyzed using Stata IC/14.2. Differences between groups were measured using chi square and t-tests. Multivariate analyses predicting injection proficiency and SI adoption employed mixed effects logistic regression. Nearly three quarters of SI clients (73%) were able to demonstrate injection proficiency without additional instruction from a provider. Years of education, having received a complete training, practicing, and taking home a job aid were associated with higher odds of proficiency. Self-reported satisfaction and continuation were high, with 93% reinjecting independently 3 months post-training. However, a substantial share of those trained opted not to self-inject. Being single, having a partner supportive of family planning use, training with a job aid, practicing, witnessing a demonstration and exposure to a full training were associated with higher odds of becoming an SI client; conversely, those trained in a group had reduced odds of becoming an SI client. The self-care program was successful for the majority of women who became self-injectors, enabling most women to demonstrate SI proficiency. Nearly all those who opted to self-inject reinjected independently, and the majority continued self-injecting for at least 1 year. Additional research should identify strategies to facilitate adoption by women who wish to self-inject but face challenges.

This guidance from the World Health Organization (WHO) aims to provide a people-centred, evidence-based normative guideline that will support individuals, communities, and countries with quality health services and self-care interventions, based on PHC strategies, comprehensive essential service packages and people-centredness. The guidance includes a “strong” recommendation for self-administered injectable contraception, stating that this should be made available as an additional approach to deliver injectable contraception for individuals of reproductive age.

This opening plenary of the Making Self-Injection Count workshop highlighted how self-injection data can help close the gender data gap by providing key information and insights on the experiences of women and adolescents. Presenters discussed how self-injection can contribute to contraceptive autonomy by enabling women and girls to make and actualize their own decisions. The session featured personal stories from a self-injection ambassador, self-injection provider, and self-injection client.

Objectives

By the end of this session, participants were able to:

• Describe the importance of self-injection for contraceptive autonomy, and self-injection in the context of self-care.
• Describe the landscape of self-injection data availability.
• Understand experiences of self-injection from the lens of a provider, user, and advocate.

Key takeaways

• While progress is being made, self-injection data availability is still limited compared to other contraceptive data sets.
• Disaggregation by client age, district, and DMPA-SC delivery mode (self-injected vs. provider-administered DMPA-SC) is essential to DMPA-SC data tracking.
• High-quality data systems give us insight into women’s and girls’ preferences, client access to family planning, provider training needs, and global supply management opportunities.

Presenters

• Caitlin Corneliess, MPH, Project Director, DMPA-SC Access Collaborative
• Fannie Kachale, Director Reproductive Health Services, Ministry of Health, Malawi
• Briana Lucido, WHO Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research
• Dr. George Swomen, MD, Programme Officer of Special Projects, Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN)
• Fatimata Deme, President, Senegalese Women’s Network for the Promotion of Family Planning
• Matilda, Volunteer, Kibalinga Health Centre in Uganda

This brief details the strong body of evidence and experience with self-injection of DMPA-SC in low-resource settings, including how the practice can reduce access-related barriers, improve contraceptive continuation, and enhance women’s autonomy.

This article compares results from interviews with DMPA-SC providers in two separate pilot studies: 1) 53 medical and nursing school students teaching women how to self-inject (2016–2017); and 2) 34 lay community health workers providing DMPA-SC in rural areas of Lualaba (2017). All providers gave information on socio-demographic characteristics, recruitment,) training, supervision, experience and satisfaction with the provision of DMPA-SC. The paper examines variations in responses from the different provider cadres.

The DMPA-SC Update is a periodic newsletter from the PATH-JSI DMPA-SC Access Collaborative highlighting global efforts to expand access to the self-injectable DMPA-SC in the context of a full range of family planning options. Click here to subscribe. For more information, please contact FPoptions@path.org.

An in-depth look at DMPA-SC and self-injection introduction in Zambia

The DMPA-SC Access Collaborative (AC) hosted this virtual discussion on February 16, 2023 to explore the challenges of introducing new contraceptive methods in the context of informed choice programming. This webinar focused on findings from a recent study conducted in Zambia which aimed to determine:

• The barriers to clients’ ability to exercise autonomy in their choice of family planning methods and modes of administration.
• The extent to which provider perceptions and method bias affect access to self-injection as a new contraceptive option.

This research was conducted as part of the AC’s broader learning agenda and focused on the potential risks to informed choice that could arise as new products or service innovations are integrated in family planning programs. While a new intervention is intended to expand contraceptive access and options, its introduction may inadvertently convey to providers that it is inherently better than existing products or practices. In the case of DMPA-SC, providers may promote self-injection over provider administration. Alternatively, providers may feel hesitant about a new method and withhold information. In either case, the client’s right to receive accurate information about a variety of methods and to make an informed choice about her reproductive health care is compromised. To explore these questions, the AC conducted a literature review and study interviewing both clients and providers to understand how DMPA-SC and self-injection are being offered in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province.

The PATH-JSI DMPA-SC Access Collaborative shared evidence and insights through nearly 20 presentations and events at the 6th International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) in November 2022 in Thailand.