Maternal Health Communication and Gender: A Case of Wajir County

Abstract

Maternal health communication is crucial for the safe delivery of newborn babies as well as healthy and happy mothers. This study sought to establish the relationship between maternal health communication and gender, focusing on Wajir County. The objectives were to identify the determinants of maternal health communication, establish the role played by gender in maternal health communication, and find out the relationship between maternal health communication and gender in Wajir County. The study was guided by five tenets: perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, barriers, and cues to actions, provided by the health belief model (HBM). A descriptive research design was adopted, and the population was 550,108 people living in Wajir County. The target population was 135,508 people in Wajir North Sub County. Stratified random sampling was used to select 384 respondents from the target population. For data collection, a questionnaire and an interview guide were used. Descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and content analysis for the interviews helped in data analysis. The results of the determinants of maternal health communication were as follows: barriers (95.5%), distance to the health facility (90%), and perceived severity (90%). On the second objective, the husband's decision played a key role in whether or not women would seek to deliver in health facilities (91.5%). For the third objective, only perceived barriers (p<0.05) and perceived cues (p<0.05) to action were significant. The study concluded that perceived barriers, benefits, cues to action, severity, and susceptibility were some of the determinants of maternal health communication with varying degrees of effect on gender. The study recommended that when designing maternal health communication programs in Wajir County, more emphasis should be put on perceived cues to action and perceived barriers.