High-Impact Practices (HIPs), when scaled up and institutionalized, will maximize investments in a comprehensive family planning strategy.

Over the past five decades, family planning programs have helped improve millions of lives by helping people to decide whether and when to have children. By preventing unintended pregnancy and helping to space births, family planning reduces infant, child, and maternal mortality.

However, the family planning agenda remains unfinished. Half of all pregnancies are unplanned or unintended. Some 201 million women in developing countries are estimated to have unmet need for contraception--that is, they want to space or limit births but are not currently using contraception. A seminal article in the Lancet journal indicated: 

"Promotion of family planning in countries with high birth rates has the potential to reduce poverty and hunger and avert 32% of all maternal deaths and nearly 10% of childhood deaths" -- Lancet 2006.

To help maximize investments in and impact of family planning programs, the U.S. Agency for International Development convened a group of international experts in family planning and reproductive health to identify "high-impact practices."  HIPs are grouped into two interrelated categories: 

Enabling environment

Service delivery

Creating an Enabling Environment facilitates implementation of high-impact practices in service delivery, the second category of HIPs.  The list of HIPs is not intended to constitute or replace a strategy, which should be informed by the Elements of Success in Family Planning Programming and driven by country context.