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Improving Health Care Providers' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices in Reproductive Health in Rural Romania

To support new health reform initiatives undertaken by the Romanian Ministry of Health and Family (MoHF), and in support of the U.S.Agency for International Development (USAID) Romania strategy for improving women's reproductive health, Project Concern International/Romaina (PCI/R) was awarded a two-year grant by USAID to implement a reproductive health care project, Healthy Parents-Healthy Children (HP-HC). This project trained 593 family physicians and nurses in rural dispensaries in techniques to improve pre- and postnatal care. It included training on modern contraception, cervical and breast cancer screening, treating menopause and its symptoms, and the encouragement of healthy lifestyles. In October 2000, the Population Council awarded PCI/R a grant to implement an Operations Research (OR) Project, "Improving Health Care Providers' Knowledge Attitudes and Practices in Reproductive Health in Rural Romania." The goal of the OR project was to test the efficacy of interventions to improve the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) of rural general practitioners (GP) and nurses who were trained by PCI/R's HP-HC training program and to assess changes in reproductive health knowledge and behavior among community women of reproductive age.