HIV Testing, Household and Reproductive Health Decision-Making: The Role of Women Autonomy in a Nationally Representative Study in Cambodia

Authors

  • Wah Myint Center for Community Health and Aging, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
  • Aishatu Yusuf Center for Community Health and Aging, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
  • Angela Nguyen Department of Health Behavior, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
  • Elfreda Samman Center for Community Health and Aging, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25259/IJMA_36_2024

Keywords:

  • Cambodia,
  • Decision-Making,
  • HIV Testing,
  • Personal Autonomy,
  • Women’s Health

Abstract

Background and Objective

Women’s autonomy plays a critical role in decision-making of health service use. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) testing and decision-making autonomy among Cambodian women aged 15–49.

Methods

We used data from the 2021–2022 Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and our sample consisted of currently married/cohabiting women aged 15–49 (N = 13,755). The outcome variable was “ever been tested for HIV.” Covariates were household decision-making and reproductive health decision-making scores, socio-demographic characteristics (age, place of residency, education, wealth quintiles, and employment status), and HIV knowledge (HIV self-test kits, drugs to prevent HIV in babies during pregnancy, antiretroviral [ARV] drugs, and pre-exposure prophylaxis).

Results

Sixty-one percent of studied women reported ever being tested for HIV. The logistic regression results revealed that women with a higher household decision-making score (aOR = 2.09, p < 0.001), reproductive health decision-making score (aOR = 1.72, p < 0.001), from 25 to 29 age groups (aOR = 2.21, p < 0.001), with a higher education (aOR = 1.96, p = 0.001), from the richest groups (aOR = 1.73, p < 0.001), had knowledge of HIV test kits but never get tested (aOR = 1.38, p = 0.035), heard of drugs to avoid HIV transmission to babies during pregnancy (aOR = 1.21, p < 0.001), and heard of ARV drugs (aOR = 1.28, p < 0.001) were more likely to get tested for HIV than their counterparts. Women living in rural areas (aOR = 0.56, p < 0.001) and those who had discriminatory attitudes (aOR = 0.76, p = < 0.001) were less likely to get HIV tests than those in urban areas and those without discrimination.

Conclusion and Global Health Implications

Findings revealed that greater autonomy is important for health care use, particularly HIV testing for women in Cambodia.

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Published

2025-01-10
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How to Cite

Myint, W., Yusuf, A., Nguyen, A., & Samman, E. (2025). HIV Testing, Household and Reproductive Health Decision-Making: The Role of Women Autonomy in a Nationally Representative Study in Cambodia. International Journal of Maternal and Child Health and AIDS, 14(Continuous), e001. https://doi.org/10.25259/IJMA_36_2024

License


Copyright © 2025 Wah Myint, Aishatu Yusuf, Angela Nguyen, Elfreda Samman. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc., USA.

Creative Commons License

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , which permits others to remix, transform, and build upon the work non-commercially, provided the original author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the same terms.