Supporting family planning needs of pregnant and postpartum women through smartphone-based solutions in rural Northern India

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.7 promotes universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including family planning, information, and education. India has a dedicated National Programme for Family Planning, which offers family planning services in rural areas. Despite government services, rural women have a high unmet need for family planning and spacing. Further, women in rural areas face varied challenges in accessing healthcare, such as limited access to authentic health information, low agency, societal norms, and personal beliefs, which deepen further family planning given the associated stigma in rural India. Lack of authentic knowledge, rather misinformation, on contraception has been found to be a significant factor resulting in poor uptake of family planning. In HCI, family planning, specifically contraception use, within the sociocultural context of the Global South has been under-explored. Research has focused on other stigmatized topics like mental health and explored pregnancy and postpartum ecology; however, the family planning aspect of sexual and reproductive health needs further investigation. In this dissertation, we engage pregnant and postpartum women in a contextual inquiry to unpack how they practice family planning amid the stigma associated with it and identify their support needs. We follow the inquiry with an exploration of smartphone-based interventions to address the family planning needs of pregnant and postpartum women. First, we study how pregnant and postpartum women perceive and practice family planning, and further uncover the sociocultural nuances in their practice, and investigate their support needs. Second, we study how pregnant and postpartum women use a peer support group to discuss family planning despite the topic being stigmatized, even in close social circles. Third, we investigate how pregnant and postpartum women use ChatGPT to learn about family planning methods and how they fit/do not fit into women’s support networks. This dissertation adds to the HCI4D research by shifting focus to the family planning needs of pregnant and postpartum women residing in resource-constrained settings and unpacking the potential of smartphone-based interventions for addressing family planning needs.