‘I thought if I marry the prophet I would not die’: The significance of religious affiliation on marriage, HIV testing, and reproductive health practices among young married women in Zimbabwe

摘要

This study examines the association between religious affiliation and reasons for marriage, perceived church attitudes, and reproductive health-seeking behaviors, including HIV testing, among young women in eastern rural Zimbabwe. The sample comprised women (N?=?35) who had married by 2012 while participating in a larger randomized controlled trial (RCT) to test the effects of school support on HIV-related risk. The RCT sample was identified in 2007 as all female sixth graders in 25 rural eastern Zimbabwe primary schools whose parents, one or both, had died (N?=?328). In our previous RCT analyses, we found that participants who affiliated with an Apostolic church were more than four times more likely to marry than those from non-Apostolic churches and that control group participants were twice as likely to marry as those in the intervention group. Other studies had found that marriage greatly increased the odds of HIV infection among adolescent women. Given the link between Apostolic affiliation a...