Training of opinion leaders in family planning in India: does it serve any purpose?

Community leaders are known to play a crucial role in the diffusion of innovations. The government of India started an ambitious programme for the training of opinion leaders in family planning, so as to provide a boost to its National Family Planning (Welfare) Programme. The present study attempts to analyse the knowledge, attitudes and practices of opinion leaders who had been trained in such Orientation Training Camps, vis a vis their untrained counterparts from the same geopolitical region. There was a highly significant difference between the knowledge of the two groups (p < 0.001) and a minor difference in their attitudes towards family planning (p = 0.18), but the practices of opinion leaders from both the groups were identical, thus pointing to a significant KAP-gap in the trained group. Opinion leaders from both the groups were engaged in minimal or negligible motivational work among their followers for acceptance of contraception, and only a very limited few from both the groups had themselves adopted any method of modern contraception.