Friday, September 30th, 2011 - No comments

World Contraception Day: Let’s Use Social Media

By: BridgetAkudo Nwagbara, Chair of the Youth Health Workers Advocates, Nigeria – MNCH

Social media has revolutionized the way people across the globe interact with one another. At the recent, the Social Good Summit, initiatives like Shot@Life, which was launched with the intent to leverage online communities to deliver health care to marginalized and vulnerable populations, were lauded. Young people are leading this revolution! And as such, they should be the target of more initiatives that use social media.

Presently more than 2 million Nigerian youths use Facebook, Google, Twitter, Skype or other electronic social networking media. This presents an inimitable opportunity to promote the uptake of contraceptives among Nigerian youths. The Youth Health Worker Advocates-MNCH, Nigeria is harvesting this field of opportunity.

On World Population Day this year, we held an E-consultation to discuss and develop fresh ideas for delivering youth friendly sexual and reproductive health services. We explored issues like youth friendly family planning services, the perception of Nigerian youths, constraints to family planning uptake, health worker attitudes, and possible strategies to improve modern contraceptive awareness and uptake. We concluded with a mandate to develop a platform where young Nigerian health workers and youths can interact to expand awareness and an increase in use of modern family planning methods.

An online social media based E-campaign tagged “NOT YET” is one unique way to deliver on this mandate. Using eye-catching and thought provoking illustrations and messages, the E-campaign will cover the following themes: contraceptive counseling, life skills mentoring, STI/HIV prevention counseling, sexual violence counseling, post abortion counseling, and relationship counseling. It will employ a rights-based approach to deliver options to vulnerable groups. More importantly, measures will be taken to ensure confidentiality.

Considering the health worker crisis in Nigeria, this E-campaign will cover the thousand-mile distance between a youth and a friendly health worker willing to provide much needed contraceptive education and services. Moreover, Youth Friendly Family Planning Service Centers are very few in Nigeria, making online services a welcome development.

Presently, partners are being approached to support this initiative and research is ongoing to lay evidence-based groundwork.

JOIN AND SUPPORT THE E-CAMPAIGN!

CONTACT: Bridget Nwagbara, Chair/Coordinator-Youth Health Worker Advocate-MNCH, Nigeria

Email: banwagbara@gmail.com

This blog is part of a series on youth perspectives to celebrate World Contraception Day run by Women Deliver.

• Email info(at)womendeliver.org if you’d like to contribute a blog post to the series.

The views expressed in this blog-post are solely those of the author.