Money Matters

Understanding financial barriers to family planning services for Rwandan adolescent girls throughsocial listening

Financial barriers to health services have been identified in African countries. Rwanda has a pro-poor, countrywide insurance scheme that includes a package of family planning services. However, there is lower utilisation by adolescents. I explored conversations on social media platforms around financial barriers to family planning in Rwanda, particularly for adolescents to provide direction for policy revisions to improve access to contraceptives for adolescents, to enhance their life-long potential.

I found a paucity of direct postings on public sites by adolescents, reflecting social stigma related to teenage sexual activity and lack of inter-generational dialogue on this subject. Messages implied prohibitive prices for socially acceptable contraceptives in the private sector, social stigma affecting access to affordable publicly available services and backfiring of well-intentioned laws and policies.

I concluded that the financial barriers to contraceptives by adolescents are compounded by legal frameworks and social and cultural factors and their intersection.
The ‘relationship’ between the conversations captured on social media and socio-cultural and legal context is recursive. Careful consideration to both policies and interventions is required to increase access to contraceptives for adolescents. Have others used a Social Listening approach to determine barriers to family planning for teenagers in other countries where there is less stigma attached to teenage sexual behaiour?