As the world’s eyes turn towards sexual and reproductive health ahead of July’s major Family Planning Summit, experts from Marie Stopes International revealed Impact 2 today, an updated tool which allows organisations to estimate the high level impact of their sexual and reproductive health services in less developed countries*.

Presented to experts throughout the sexual and reproductive health sector at the Wellcome Trust in London, this innovative tool is the solution to a problem that many family planning organisations face – namely, the difficulty of demonstrating high level outcomes such as maternal lives saved, without having to use expensive surveys and complex mathematical modelling themselves.

Given that July’s Family Planning Summit will be co-hosted by the UK Government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we expect high levels of interest in family planning and – especially at this economic time – how investment in it can be justified.

Impact 2 will allow the entire sexual and reproductive health sector to demonstrate how we contribute to higher level national health, demographic, and economic goals, in addition to our routine measuring of family planning methods delivered to clients.

Because of our investment in developing this user-friendly tool, country level programme managers will now be able to harness complex datasets to estimate their contribution to national goals, plan for future provision and advocate to governments and donors about the importance of investing in family planning in less developed countries.

The tool, developed in partnership with health economists and demographers, and peer reviewed by the Guttmacher Institute, Population Council, EngenderHealth, Futures Institute, Population Council and the UNFPA, is now being used by 20 organisations including DFID.

Impact 2 allows organisations to estimate the number of DALYs** saved, as well as unplanned pregnancies and births, maternal deaths and unsafe abortions averted based on their actual service provision data. It also allows them to estimate economic impact, through measures such as cost savings to families and national health systems.

We’re delighted that important organisations such as DFID are benefitting from our investment. Being able to estimate how much we can contribute to a government’s goal of increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate for example, or reducing maternal deaths, is one of the key abilities the family planning world has been waiting for.

To use Impact 2 visit www.mariestopes.org

*Michelle Beth Weinberger, Francisco Pozo-Martin, Nick Corby, Kenzo Fry, Tania Boler, Kristen Hopkins: Impact 2 - a new user-friendly tool for assessing family planning programmes and planning high-impact interventions.

**'Disability Adjusted Life Years, or the number of years lost due to ill health, disability or death.

About Marie Stopes International

Millions of the world's poorest and most vulnerable women trust Marie Stopes International to provide them with quality sexual and reproductive health care. We have been delivering contraception, safe abortion, and mother and baby care for over thirty years and work in 42 countries around the world. By providing high quality services where they are needed the most, we prevent unnecessary deaths and make a sustainable impact on the lives of millions of people every year.

For more information, please visit www.mariestopes.org