Background:
The purpose of this study was to design and measure the effects of antenatal health education on spousal participation in birth preparedness and institutional delivery in Farafenni and satellite villages.

Methods:
The study used a quasi-experimental design, and the participants were 300 spouses of pregnant women attending their antenatal care booking at Farafenni Hospital who were equally distributed to the intervention and comparison groups. Pre-test data were collected from both groups. Thereafter, the intervention group was exposed to two health education sessions. The post-test data were collected immediately prior to the discharge of the participants’ wives after institutional delivery. IBM SPSS version 21 software was used to analyze the data, and Chi-square, t-test, ANCOVA, and hierarchal linear regression were used to verify the association between the independent and dependent variables.

Findings:
After controlling for the demographic variables, the health education administered to the intervention group effectively increased knowledge of birth preparedness among them (F (1, 255) = 376.108, p < .001). Furthermore, the participants in the intervention group had a higher mean score (M = 4.4; SD = 0.8) on participation in birth preparedness than those in the comparison group (M = 0.9; SD = 0.8). The spouses in the intervention group were four times more likely to be prepared for the delivery of their wives after being exposed to health education than those in the comparison group (F (1, 255) = 522.414, p < .001). The spouses in the intervention group also participated more in institutional delivery care of their wives than those in the comparison group (F (1, 255) = 49.398, p < .001).

Conclusion:
The study provided evidence that educating men on maternal health care can improve their level of participation in birth preparedness and institutional delivery.