@article {Kamhawi180, author = {Sarah Kamhawi and Carol Underwood and Huda Murad and Bushra Jabre}, title = {Client-centered counseling improves client satisfaction with family planning visits: evidence from Irbid, Jordan}, volume = {1}, number = {2}, pages = {180--192}, year = {2013}, doi = {10.9745/GHSP-D-12-00051}, publisher = {Global Health: Science and Practice}, abstract = {In Irbid, Jordan, a combination of community outreach, using home visits, plays, women{\textquoteright}s groups, and religious leaders, and improved client-provider counseling based on the {\textquotedblleft}Consult and Choose{\textquotedblright} approach increased family planning demand and client satisfaction. Service statistic trends suggest increased contraceptive use. Background: High levels of unmet need for family planning and high contraceptive discontinuation rates persist in Jordan, prompting the Jordan Health Communication Partnership (JHCP) to initiate a client-centered family planning service program called {\textquotedblleft}Consult and Choose{\textquotedblright} (CC), together with community-based activities to encourage women with unmet need to visit health centers. Methods: We held exit interviews with 461 family planning clients between November{\textendash}December 2011 to assess, from the clients{\textquoteright} perspective, whether trained providers followed the CC protocol and used the CC tools, as well as to measure client satisfaction. We also tracked referral card information from community-based activities to health centers and examined service statistics to explore trends in family planning use. Results: On average, clients reported that providers performed 5.6 of the 7 steps outlined in the CC protocol. Nearly 83\% of respondents were very satisfied with their clinic visits. Logistic regression analysis found that the odds of being {\textquotedblleft}very satisfied{\textquotedblright} increases by 20\% with each additional counseling protocol step performed and by 70\% with each increase in the number of CC materials used. Between June 2011 and August 2012, 14,490 referral cards from community-based activities were collected in health centers, 59\% of which were for family planning services. Service statistic trends indicate an increase in the number of new family planning users and in couple-years of protection after starting the CC program. Conclusions: Implementation of the CC program at health centers nationally, in tandem with community-based interventions, could play a key role in attaining Jordan{\textquoteright}s goal of reducing its total fertility rate to 2.1 by 2030. Although this initiative would likely be replicated most readily in other middle-income countries, lower-resource countries could also adapt the tested CC approach.}, URL = {https://www.ghspjournal.org/content/1/2/180}, eprint = {https://www.ghspjournal.org/content/1/2/180.full.pdf}, journal = {Global Health: Science and Practice} }