Addition of mHealth (mobile health) for family planning support in Kenya: disparities in access to mobile phones and associations with contraceptive knowledge and use

BACKGROUND: Recently mobile health (mHealth) has been implemented in Kenya to support family planning. Our objectives were to investigate disparities in mobile phone ownership and to examine the associations between exposure to family planning messages through mHealth (stand-alone or combined with other channels such as public forums, informational materials, health workers, social media and political/religious/community leaders' advocacy) and contraceptive knowledge and use. METHODS: Logistic and Poisson regression models were used to analyze the 2014 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey. RESULTS: Among 31 059 women, 86. 7% had mobile phones and were more likely to have received higher education, have children ≤5 y of age and tended to be wealthier or married. Among 7397 women who were sexually active, owned a mobile phone and received family planning messages through at least one channel, 89. 8% had no exposure to mHealth. mHealth alone was limited in improving contraceptive knowledge and use but led to intended outcomes when used together with four other channels compared with other channels only (knowledge: incidence rate ratio 1. 084 95% confidence interval CI 1. 063-1. 106; use: odds ratio 1. 429 95% CI 1. 026-1. 989). CONCLUSIONS: Socio-economic disparities existed in mobile phone ownership, and mHealth alone did not improve contraceptive knowledge and use among Kenyan women. However, mHealth still has potential for family planning when used with existing channels.