Country Profiles

Research

Family Health International (FHI) has worked with governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Ghana since the early 1980s to improve the health of men, women, and children. We have provided technical assistance in the evaluation of contraceptive methods, the development and evaluation of family planning policy, the calculation of family planning costs, the evaluation of maternal and child health care services, and the control and prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS. FHI's reproductive health activities have helped improve accessibility to and acceptability of family planning services, and to improve maternal and child health. Recent activities have focused on evaluations of emergency contraceptive service provision and on the impact of the implementation of national reproductive health guidelines in the country.

More Research Highlights

Through its YouthNet project, FHI worked with youth leaders in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia to develop long-range adolescent reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention programming plans and to enhance the capacity of local volunteer organizations to expand promising HIV-prevention programs. FHI also worked with international and local partners in Ghana and other African countries to review curricula currently being used for teaching students in primary and secondary schools about reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention. Case studies of the best programs will be developed, as will guidelines in how to use and adapt the curricula for local contexts.
FHI conducted a study in Ghana and two other countries to identify the motives of participants for enrolling in clinical trials or intervention programs, determine how and to what degree perceived social desirability factors affect their reporting in such trials, and seek participants' suggestions for mitigating social desirability bias and self-report accuracy in their culture and sub-population.
A collaborative FHI study investigating the effectiveness of providing STI syndromic management training to pharmacists to improve their STI-related client counseling skills found that pharmacists who received training did a better job of taking client histories, providing treatment for gonorrhea, and discussing the importance of partner notification with clients. However, those who received training did no better in the treatment of chlamydia than those who did not, and neither group of pharmacists adequately promoted condom use, the study found.