Family Planning Campaign - Bangladesh
Description:
The Bangladesh Social Marketing Project, founded by Population Services International (PSI) in 1974, played a major role in the reduction of the country's fertility rate from approximately 7 to 4.9 over the past 20 years. In 1992, anticipating an eventual plateauing of the existing demand for contraceptive services, PSI decided to undertake a generic demand-creation programme that would serve to support the activities of all family planning institutions in the country. Formative research lead to the development of key messages about contraceptives targeting religious concerns, spousal communication, fears regarding detrimental health effects and ignorance about contraceptive options. The campaign identified rural men as the primary target audience; rural women and urban men as secondary target audiences; and opinion leaders and other influentials as the tertiary target audience.
The main goals of this project were: to actualise existing latent demand for contraception; to help create a demand for family planning among couples reaching reproductive age; and to motivate those who for one reason or another still resisted the concept of family planning.
The campaign consisted of:
- 72 episodes of a radio serial drama, aired twice weekly over 2.5 years
- Approximately 20 one-minute dramatic spots shown on television 3 20-minute films about literacy, family planning and oral rehydration therapy, shown in cinemas and on the project's fleet of 8 mobile film vans
- Approximately 35 radio spots aired 3-5 times/day, 7 days/week
A key component of the campaign was the radio soap opera in which the principal character, Laily, was a government family planning worker, a device which enabled the writers to integrate family planing material smoothly into the dramatic fabric. Laily, who served as a positive model of a working woman, helped to upgrade the image of family planning providers. In addition to family planning issues, the radio soap opera expanded to cover oral rehydration and other maternal and child health topics.
Family Planning, Maternal Health, Child Health.
Population Services International (PSI) and the Government of Bangladesh.
"The Use of Mainstream Media to Encourage Social Responsibility: The International Experience" - The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation - Prepared by: Jennifer Daves and Liza Nickerson - The Media Project.
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