Carinne Meyer, DrPH Candidate & Julie Freccero, MPH Candidate
During an interview with a midwife, a laboring mother was rushed into the room and delivered this perfect baby girl.
Carinne and Julie spent six weeks examining the factors that facilitate and impede the use of reproductive health vouchers by women who were eligible for the voucher program in three operational districts in Cambodia. The German Development Bank, Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) along with the Population Council, is funding the voucher project which aims to help women overcome some of the barriers to accessing family planning, safe abortion, and safe delivery services by linking demand and supply through a simple voucher system. The voucher system enables women to receive information about and to access quality services from pre-approved providers in exchange for a voucher that is distributed for free to poor families. The project was introduced in three operational districts this summer.
This is a voucher for family planning services. The front of the voucher is where service data is recorded and the back has pictorial descriptions of various contraceptive options.
Carinne and Julie conducted eight key informant interviews, four clinic visits and nine focus groups with groups of women who had received vouchers. They examined pre-existing demand and access factors, those that surround the distribution of vouchers including the access to vouchers, interactions with community-based distributors and quality of the information about the program and those issues that emerged when a woman attempts to redeem her voucher at a facility which includes knowledge, attitudes behaviors and physical barriers to accessing services.