Efect of Deploying Trained Community Based Reproductive Health Nurses (CORN) on Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) Use in Rural Ethiopia: A Cluster Randomized Community Trial Taddese Alemu Zerfu, Henok Taddese Ayele, and Tariku Nigatu Bogale To investigate the efect of innovative means to distribute LARC on contracep- tive use, we implemented a three arm, parallel groups, cluster randomized com- munity trial design. The intervention consisted of placing trained community- based reproductive health nurses (CORN) within health centers or health posts. The nurses provided counseling to encourage women to use LARC and dis- tributed all contraceptive methods. A total of 282 villages were randomly se- lected and assigned to a control arm (n = 94) or 1 of 2 treatment arms (n = 94 each). The treatment groups difered by where the new service providers were deployed, health post or health center. We calculated diference-in-diference (DID) estimates to assess program impacts on LARC use. After nine months of intervention, the use of LARC methods increased signifcantly by 72.3 percent, while the use of short acting methods declined by 19.6 percent. The proportion of women using LARC methods increased by 45.9 percent and 45.7 percent in the health post and health center based intervention arms, respectively. Com- pared to the control group, the DID estimates indicate that the use of LARC methods increased by 11.3 and 12.3 percentage points in the health post and health center based intervention arms. Given the low use of LARC methods in similar settings, deployment of contextually trained nurses at the grassroots level could substantially increase utilization of these methods. E very day somewhere in the globe, an estimated 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth (1, 2). Almost all (99 percent) of these ma- ternal deaths occur in a few low and middle income countries in sub-Saharan Africa Taddese Alemu Zerfu is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research Center, Nairobi; and an Assistant Professor of Public Health, Dilla University, College of Medicine and Health Sci- ences, Ethiopia. Email: tzerfu@aphrc.org. Henok Taddese Ayele is Assistant Professor of Public Health, Dilla University, College of Medicine and Health Sciences; and Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University, and Cen- ter for Epidemiology, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal. Tariku Nigatu Bogale is a Ph.D. student, University of Gondar, Institute of Public Health, Ethiopia. 1