Today, July 11, commemorates World Population day, serving as a reminder of UNFPA's announcement that "by late October our world will hit a global population of seven billion people, with some of our poorest countries doubling in population within the next decade."

According to a recent IPS article, the sharp increase in world population will have significant effects on the lives of women globally. "The rise in population is expected to have a devastating impact on some 215 million women who want -- but do not have -- access to quality reproductive health and family planning services."

In fact, early data being gathered by the International Center for Research on Women shows a direct link between access to family planning and a rise in quality of life for females. "Initial analysis suggests that as fertility declines and contraceptive use increases, daughters become as valued as sons in traditionally patriarchal families, parents invest more in their daughters’ education and the gap between spouses’ ages and education narrows, which implies more equity in marital partnerships. If our early analyses are confirmed, we believe it will mean that improving access to voluntary, high quality family planning care can further contribute to a world where women are as educated, as financially stable and as valued as men."

In honor of World Population day, Knowledge for Health continues to facilitate tools that will empower women through family planning. Recently, K4Health launched the Community-Based Access to Injectable Contraceptives eToolkit. According to Liz Futrell who spearheaded toolkit development, "one of the greatest strengths of the toolkit is that it addresses the specific needs of a multitude of users, including advocates, program managers, policy makers, and donors."

In particular, the Implement tab highlights nine essential steps for establishing and managing a community-based access to injectables program, taken from Provision of Injectable Contraception Services through Community-Based Distribution: An Implementation Handbook. The Implementation Handbook provides guidance and tools for evaluating the costs of a program, changing policy, managing logistics, training supervisors and community health workers, along with monitoring and evaluating programs. Therefore, it is a key resource for anyone interested in piloting, implementing, or scaling up a CBA2I program.

Overall, according to Liz, the hope is that as new partners emerge, CBA2I programs expand, and as new countries adopt the practice and adjust their policies, they will help shape future iterations of the toolkit. Another hope is a number of countries currently considering CBA2I will use the toolkit to guide them through the advocacy, pilot, implementation, and scale-up processes and then provide feedback on its practicality, relevance, and usefulness. On World Population Day, visit the Community-Based Access to Injectable Contraceptives eToolkit to learn more and share what you think.

• Advocates can access CBA2I advocacy tools, global evidence on the safety, feasibility, acceptability, and success of CBA2I, and country experiences with CBA2I. They can learn about existing national family planning policies that support CBA2I, generate and share ideas for advocating policy change, and network with other advocates worldwide.
• Program managers can view strategic guidance on piloting, implementing, and scaling up CBA2I programs. They can access curricula, job aids, and other key implementation tools, and they can share strategies and lessons learned with other implementing organizations.
• Policy makers can access examples of national family planning policies that support CBA2I and use the tools provided to update their own national family planning guidelines.
• Donors can learn about key issues in CBA2I policy development, program implementation, and scale-up, and they can view examples of successful CBA2I programming in the Global Evidence and Country Experiences sections of the toolkit.

Kate Stence is the Communications Manager of the Knowledge for Health Program.