Current practice of family planning among teachers in public secondary school in Enugu East Senatorial District, Nigeria

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study is to determine the current practice level of family planning and the associated factors among public secondary school teachers in Enugu East Senatorial District.

METHOD: A cross-sectional study was carried out among public secondary school teachers, aged 18 - 60 years, in Enugu East Senatorial District, using probability proportional to size sampling and systematic random sampling to select 1000 participants. Binary and multiple logistic regression analyses were used to determine association. An odds ratio with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was computed to determine the level of significance.

RESULTS: The current practice level of family planning is 26.5%. Respondents with bachelor in education were 2 times more likely to be a current user of family planning (AOR=2.39; 95% CI: 1.25-4.55). However, respondents in age group 38 years and above were less likely to be a current user of family planning (AOR=0.64; 95% CI: 0.43-0.95), likewise female respondents (AOR=0.66; 95% CI: 0.44-0.98). Additionally, respondents who mentioned radio (AOR=0.64; 95%CI: 0.44-0.93), social media (AOR=0.73; 95% CI: 0.53-0.99) and healthcare (AOR=0.61; 95%CI: 0.43-0.88) as source of information were less likely to be current user of family planning. Whereas, partner who encouraged the use of family planning (AOR=2.54; 95% CI: 1.71-3.78) span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'; font-weight:bold">, partner who allow each other to decide on family planning methods (AOR=4.47; 95% CI: 2.67-7.48) and those who had good knowledge of family planning (AOR=1.96; 95% CI: 1.40-2.67) were more likely to be current user of family planning.

CONCLUSION: The level of current practice of family planning is low and a significant number of factors predict the current practice of family planning. A family planning educational workshop among teachers is needed to improve teacher's knowledge on family planning to address the issue of adolescent sexual reproduction as teachers are vessels of knowledge impartation to students.