Qualitative research

The impact of neighborhood violence on domestic femicides in Mexico: A Demonstration of the Causal Inference Roadmap

June 4, 2026

The Social Science and Medicine has published Ndola Prata's new article that she co-authored with Alma LiliaJuárez Armenta: The Impact of Neighborhood Violence on Domestic Femicides in Mexico: A Demonstration of the Causal Inference Roadmap. Please click here to read the article.

Development of a Conceptual Model and Survey Instrument to Measure Conscientious Objection to Abortion Provision

Laura Florence Harris
John Koku Awoonor-Williams
Caitlin Gerdts
Laura Gil Urbano
Ana Cristina González Vélez
Jodi Halpern
Ndola Prata
Peter Baffoe
2016

Background and objective: Conscientious objection to abortion, clinicians' refusal to perform legal abortions because of their religious or moral beliefs, has been the subject of increasing debate among bioethicists, policymakers, and public health advocates in recent years. Conscientious objection policies are intended to balance reproductive rights and clinicians' beliefs. However, in practice, clinician objection can act as a barrier to abortion access-impinging on reproductive rights, and increasing unsafe abortion and related morbidity and mortality. There is little...

Women’s Empowerment and Fertility: A Review of the Literature

Ndola Prata
Ushma D. Upadhyay
Jessica D. Gipson
Mellissa Withers
Shayna Lewis
Erica J. Ciaraldi
Ashley Fraser
Megan J. Huchko
2015

Women’s empowerment has become a focal point for development efforts worldwide and there is a need for an updated, critical assessment of the existing evidence on women’s empowerment and fertility. We conducted a literature review on studies examining the relationships between women’s empowerment and several fertility-related topics. Among the 60 studies identified for this review, the majority were conducted in South Asia (n = 35) and used household decision-making as a measure of empowerment (n = 37). Overall, the vast majority of studies found some positive associations between women’s...

Women’s Limited Choice and Availability of Modern Contraception at Retail Outlets and Public-Sector Facilities in Luanda, Angola, 2012–2015

Ndola Prata
Benjamin Nieto-Andrade
Eva Fidel
Rebecca Simmons
Dana Sievers
Anya Fedorova
Suzanne Bell
Karen Weidert
2017

In Angola, many women want to use family planning but lack access to affordable and preferred methods. This article assesses the link between women’s choice and availability of contraceptive methods in Luanda, Angola, drawing on data from 3 surveys: a 2012 survey among women ages 15–49 and 2 retail surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015 among outlets and facilities offering contraceptive methods. Descriptive statistics for women’s contraceptive knowledge, use, and preferred methods were stratified by age group. We report the percentage of establishments offering different methods and...

Making Abortion Safer in Rwanda: Operationalization of the Penal Code of 2012 to Expand Legal Exemptions and Challenges

Nuriye Nalan Sahin Hodoglugil
Fidele Ngabo
Joanna Ortega
Laetitia Nyirazinyoye
Eugene Ngoga
Evangeline Dushimeyezu
Eugene Kanyamanza
Ndola Prata
2017
Abstract

Penal code was revised in Rwanda in 2012 allowing legal termination of pregnancy resulting from rape, incest, forced marriage, or on medical grounds. An evaluation was conducted to assess women's access to abortion services as part of an ongoing program to operationalize the new exemptions for legal abortion. Data was collected from eight district hospitals; seven gender-based violence (GBV) centers and six intermediate courts. Three focus group discussions and 22 in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants. At hospitals, of the 2,644 uterine evacuation records (July...

Associations of women's position in the household and food insecurity with family planning use in Nepal

Nadia Diamond-Smith
Anita Raj
Ndola Prata
Sheri D Weiser
2017

Background: Women in Nepal have low status, especially younger women in co-resident households. Nepal also faces high levels of household food insecurity and malnutrition, and stagnation in uptake of modern family planning methods.

Objective: This study aims to understand if household structure and food insecurity interact to influence family planning use in Nepal.

Methods: Using data on married, non-pregnant women aged 15-49 with at least one child from the Nepal 2011 Demographic and Health Survey (N = 7,460), we explore the...

The impact of neighborhood violence on domestic femicides in Mexico: A demonstration of the causal inference roadmap

Alma Lilia Juárez Armenta
Ndola Prata
2026
Background The incidence of femicide, the murder of a woman for gender-based reasons, has risen significantly in recent years in Mexico, going from 427 reported victims in 2015 to 797 in 2024. Although individual-level risk factors have been studied, we aimed to study neighborhood-level factors that might be more amenable to intervention. Our study delved into the impact of municipality-level violence in Mexico on the probability of occurrence of domestic femicides at the municipality level in 2024. Methods We employed the Causal Roadmap framework for causal and statistical inference. Our...

Community Health Workers as Social Marketers of Injectable Contraceptives: A Case Study from Ethiopia

Karen Weidert
Amanuel Gessessew
Suzanne Bell
Hagos Godefay
Ndola Prata
2017

Ethiopia has made notable progress in increasing awareness and knowledge of family planning and is considered a success story among funders and program planners. Yet unmet need among rural women (28.6%) is almost double that of urban women (15.5%), with a wide gap in total fertility rate depending on urban (2.6) or rural (5.5) residence. This study investigates the impact of a service delivery model that combines community-based distribution (CBD) of contraception with social marketing in Tigray, Ethiopia, to create a more sustainable approach to CBD. Between September 2011 and...

Partner Support for Family Planning and Modern Contraceptive Use in Luanda, Angola

Ndola Prata
Suzanne Bell
Ashley Fraser
Adelaide Carvalho
Isilda Neves
d Benjamin Nieto-Andrade
2017

Husband‘s/partner‘s support for family planning may influence a women‘s modern contraceptive use. Socio-demographic factors, couple communication about family planning, and fertility preferences are known to play a role in contraceptive use. We conducted logistic regression analysis to investigate the relationship between perceived husband‘s/partner‘s approval and husband‘s/partner‘s encouragement of modern contraceptive use, adjusting for socio-demographic factors and recent couple communication about family planning. We also examined mediating roles potentially played by perceived...

Microbicides and HIV: Help or Hindrance?

Eran Karmon
Malcolm Potts
Wayne Getz
2003

We present a simple mathematical model for assessing the effects of introducing a microbicide as an HIV infection protective method. As very little is known about the in vivo efficacy of microbicides, we ran sample scenarios for microbicides of various efficacies. We found that, in general, if existing condom usage in a community is low, introducing a microbicide will most likely have a positive impact on HIV incidence as abandonment of condom use in favor of microbicides will not play a significant role. If condom use in a community is high, though, attrition of condom users could play a...