Modelled Estimates for Measuring Progress in FP Program in India

Jay Prakash, Family Planning Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India
Ashwani Kumar, Avenir Health (Track20 India Project)

Assessing the prevalence of contraceptive use accurately has been challenging for the countries at the lower administrative divisions for effectively monitoring the program. Moreover, countries have struggled when the surveys are not conducted regularly or at longer gaps of 5-10 years. Sometimes the survey estimates were less reliable due to various reasons. We re-estimated the prevalence at the sub-national levels using the Family Planning Estimation Tool (FPET) which follows Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling. The sub-national-level estimates were then used to arrive at the national estimate using a bottom-up approach at a defined level of uncertainty. Some states were found to be outliers and were left out of the input data. FPET provided the annual estimates of contraceptive use, unmet needs, and demand satisfied at lower administrative boundaries up to a certain level of accuracy. These estimates are found to be more reliable and fill the gap for the years when there are no surveys in the country. The use of FPET allowed us to have better annual estimates of FP indicators at the national and sub-national levels and was also used to monitor the progress of family planning progress in India.

Keywords: Family Planning and Contraception, Data and Methods, Multi-level modeling , Population Policies

See extended abstract.