Thematic Analysis and Mapping of Reproductive Empowerment Scales: A Tool for Family Planning Self-Care Programming and Research

INTRODUCTION

In the past decade, the field of family planning has seen an acceleration in conversations about self-care interventions and, within that, a resurgence of discussions on reproductive empowerment. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines self-care as¹: the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of the health provider.

Self-care spans a range of practices including self-awareness, self-testing, and self-management, and self-care interventions are tools that support self-care.¹ Reproductive empowerment is defined as the capacity of individuals to achieve their reproductive goals,² and it is recognized as a fundamental principle for self-care.

Understanding the relationship between self-care and empowerment is necessary to improve the design, implementation, and scale-up of family planning self-care interventions. Yet, evidence on the relationship between reproductive empowerment and self-care, including the strength of the association, the direction of the association, or the hypothetical causality, is inadequate. A recent systematic review we conducted to understand the relationship between contraceptive self-care interventions and reproductive empowerment found clear gaps in the gray and published literature.³ Following the WHO guideline on self-care interventions,^{1 …}