IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0098221.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying and Addressing Barriers to Uptake of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision in Nyanza, Kenya among Men 18–35: A Qualitative Study

Author

Listed:
  • Emily Evens
  • Michele Lanham
  • Catherine Hart
  • Mores Loolpapit
  • Isaac Oguma
  • Walter Obiero

Abstract

Background: Uptake of VMMC among adult men has been lower than desired in Nyanza, Kenya. Previous research has identified several barriers to uptake but qualitative exploration of barriers is limited and evidence-informed interventions have not been fully developed. This study was conducted in 2012 to 1) increase understanding of barriers to VMMC and 2) to inform VMMC rollout through the identification of evidence-informed interventions among adult men at high risk of HIV in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Methods: Focus groups (n = 8) and interviews were conducted with circumcised (n = 8) and uncircumcised men (n = 14) from the two districts in Nyanza, Kenya. Additional interviews were conducted with female partners (n = 20), health providers (n = 12), community leaders (n = 12) and employers (n = 12). Interview and focus group guides included questions about individual, interpersonal and societal barriers to VMMC uptake and ways to overcome them. Inductive thematic coding and analysis were conducted through a standard iterative process. Results: Two primary concerns with VMMC emerged 1) financial issues including missing work, losing income during the procedure and healing and family survival during the recovery period and 2) fear of pain during and after the procedure. Key interventions to address financial concerns included: a food or cash transfer, education on saving and employer-based benefits. Interventions to address concerns about pain included refining the content of demand creation and counseling messages about pain and improving the ways these messages are delivered. Conclusions: Men need accurate and detailed information on what to expect during and after VMMC regarding both pain and time away from work. This information should be incorporated into demand creation activities for men considering circumcision. Media content should frankly and correctly address these concerns. Study findings support scale up and/or further improvement of these ongoing educational programs and specifically targeting the demand creation period.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Evens & Michele Lanham & Catherine Hart & Mores Loolpapit & Isaac Oguma & Walter Obiero, 2014. "Identifying and Addressing Barriers to Uptake of Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision in Nyanza, Kenya among Men 18–35: A Qualitative Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(6), pages 1-7, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0098221
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098221
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0098221&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0098221?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bruce Larson & Allan Tindikahwa & George Mwidu & Hannah Kibuuka & Fred Magala, 2015. "How Much Does It Cost to Improve Access to Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision among High-Risk, Low-Income Communities in Uganda?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-11, March.
    2. Caitlin E Kennedy & Ping Teresa Yeh & Kaitlyn Atkins & Virginia A Fonner & Michael D Sweat & Kevin R O’Reilly & George W Rutherford & Rachel Baggaley & Julia Samuelson, 2020. "Economic compensation interventions to increase uptake of voluntary medical male circumcision for HIV prevention: A systematic review and meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0098221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.