Private Sector Social Franchising and Its Effects on Contraceptive Utilization

Abstract

Partnerships such as social franchising have been voted as some of the best approaches to remedying the challenges faced by the public health sector. Yet, though considered an important model of healthcare delivery, contribution of these social franchisees to utilization of contraceptives has been under-researched. This study sought to identify the effects of social franchising on contraceptive utilization using data from the Government District Health Information System Version 2 (DHIS2). Data for 72 franchise and non-franchise facilities was obtained for a period of two years (2018 and 2019). Contraceptive utilization in the two categories of facilities was assessed using Multivariate analysis of variance. Contraceptives were grouped into two groups: Long Acting and Reversible Contraceptives (LARC) and Short-Term methods (STM). Franchising was found to significantly affect the uptake of LARC (p 0.000< α 0.05) while the effect on STM was not significant (p 0.0943>α 0.05). Further, with all other factors constant, franchising increased the uptake of STM by 8.735 and LARC by 14.3. Therefore, based on the results of this study, this paper recommends partnerships with more franchising organizations to accelerate attainment of SDG3 and need for frequent capacity building of the private health sector players especially on LARC. National and county governments need to ensure commodity security for the private sector and provide regular oversight as it happens with the public sector.