Health communication for family planning services in India: a narrative review

Background
In 1952, India became the first nation in the world to adopt a formal population poli-cy and to introduce an official family planning scheme, which continues to be the cornerstone of family planning efforts today. However, despite widespread awareness of family planning options and the declining rate of the total fertility rate, there remains a significant gap between under-standing and acceptability of these options. To guarantee that family planning initiatives are successful, one of the main areas of concentration is the quality of communication initiatives.

Objectives
This narrative review focuses on two aims: 1) to provide an overview of health communication activities in the context of family planning in India and 2) to identify the outcomes of the programs to advance our knowledge in the future.

Material and methods
A review of online research databases like PubMed, Google Scholar, DOAJ, Web of Science, and Science Direct was conducted, and articles that evaluated health communication initiatives for family planning programs in India published between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2023, were identified.

Results
The final review selected 21 papers that met the inclusion criteria.

Conclusions
Most of the documented interventions concentrated on behavioral outcomes, such as starting to use modern contraceptive techniques and adopting family planning approaches. Additionally, the findings from this study present the effectiveness of existing communication approaches taken for community mobilizing and improving contraceptive use in rural India.