Do On-Site Family Planning and HIV Services Increase Client Loads in Ethiopia?

Heather M Bradley, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Getnet Mitike, Addis Ababa University
Amy Tsui, Johns Hopkins University

Integrating reproductive health services is often endorsed as a means to increase clients’ ease of use while maximizing scarce health care resources. We used multivariate linear regression to examine whether Ethiopian health facilities offering higher levels of HIV and family planning service integration are more likely to yield higher HIV or family planning client volumes than facilities with lower levels of service integration. For health facilities in our sample, both HIV and family planning monthly client loads increase incrementally and significantly with each higher level of integration, compared with facilities offering neither family planning nor HIV services. This positive association persists after adjusting for region, facility type, number of staff and availability of other health services. These data suggest that integration of HIV and family planning services may increase both HIV and family planning client loads, and that higher levels of integration have larger effects on client loads.