Despite impressive global investment in reproductive health programs in West Africa, maternal mortality remains unacceptably high and obstetric care is often inadequate. Fertility is among the highest in the world, while contraceptive prevalence remains among the lowest. This paper explores the social and technical dimensions of this situation. We argue that effective reproductive health programs require analyzing the interfaces between technical programs and the social logics and behaviors of health professionals and client populations. Significant gaps between health programs' goals and the behaviors of patients and health care professionals have been observed. While public health projects aim to manage reproduction, sexuality, fertility, and professional practices are regulated socially. Such projects may target technical practices, but access to care is greatly influenced by social norms and ethics. This paper shows how an empirical anthropology that investigates the social and technical interfaces of reproduction can contribute to improved global health.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 May 2016.
All research outputs
#5,336,443
of 28,833,811 outputs
Outputs from Social Science & Medicine
#4,890
of 12,828 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#69,234
of 319,012 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Social Science & Medicine
#69
of 120 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,833,811 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 81st percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 12,828 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 120 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
