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Contraceptive and fertility behavior of family planning clinic dropouts: a Maryland study.

L P Chow, R V Rider, S I Su and W I Hou

A study to examine the acceptance of and drop-out from family planning clinic services in Maryland was undertaken during 1984-85 by interviewing a random sample of 1,020 women who came to the clinics as "new clients" during 1980 through 1982 when they were 20 through 39 years of age. This article examines the contraceptive and fertility behavior after their last clinic visits. The results showed that most of these women were "protected" from pregnancy risk considerably beyond their last clinic visit. However, the analysis also revealed that in spite of the reported high contraceptive use rate, unplanned pregnancies occurred after the client's last clinic visit, suggesting that contraceptive use was either inconsistent or ineffective. These findings suggest that instead of allocating a large proportion of resources to follow-up acceptors to bring the "drop-outs" back to the clinics, a more effective program strategy would be to systematically and effectively educate and counsel the clients during their clinic attendance, especially during their first clinic visit.