On Monday, September 17, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, hosted “Maintaining the Momentum: Highlights from the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning (FP).” This panel discussion was a virtual who’s who in family planning – with the main room full as well as two additional rooms literally overflowing – as folks gathered to hear current luminaries talk about highlights and next steps to the 2012 London FP Summit, what is now called FP2020.

On the eve of the London Summit for Family Planning, The Lancet published a series of articles and commentaries that explores the links between contraception, population growth, and the health and wellbeing of the planet and its current and future inhabitants. The series reviews an array of evidence on the toll that lack of access to family planning takes not only on maternal and child health but also on the social, economic, and environmental health of communities, nations, and the world.

A mother in Abuja, Nigeria reads a family planning and child spacing brochure to learn about contraceptive options available in the area.

© 2012 Kim Blessing/JHU∙CCP, Courtesy of Photoshare

Those who work in family planning are well aware that national political will and international support for contraceptive programs has waned in recent decades. This neglect has perpetuated a continued lack of access, particularly in low-resource settings where the consequences are most dire. The Lancet’s series examines the potential of family planning to advance global health from so many angles that even readers whose careers are devoted to the cause will gain fresh perspective and new insights.

The rebirth of family planning: Herbert Peterson of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, who led the planning, commissioning, and preparation of the series, and Richard Horton of The Lancet identify two central challenges to addressing unmet need: stronger advocacy to policymakers to devote more attention to family planning and translating the scientific evidence presented in this series into innovative programs that are implemented well to achieve universal access to reproductive health.

Making family planning a national development priority: Pierre Damien Habumuremyi, Prime Minster of Rwanda, and Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, credit five factors with increased contraceptive use in the successful case studies of Rwanda and Ethiopia over the past decade:

Girls who give birth in adolescence have a much higher risk of maternal mortality than women in their 20’s and 30’s. In fact, girls younger than 16 face four times the risk of maternal death as women older than 20. Yet each year, 16 million adolescent girls ages 15-19 give birth, accounting for roughly 11 percent of all births globally. Nearly 95% of these births occur in developing countries. The commitments made at last week’s London Summit on Family Planning will not only protect the health of millions of adolescents in developing countries, but will also improve educational and employment opportunities for young women around the world.

The Interagency Youth Working Group’s blog Half the World discusses how the London Summit on Family Planning will benefit young people.

On July 11, 2012, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.K. Government—along with UNFPA and other partners—convened the high-profile London Summit on Family Planning. The overall goal of the summit, held on World Population Day, was to raise $4 billion to ensure that contraceptive information, services, and supplies are available to an additional 120 million women in the world’s poorest countries by the year 2020.

Key themes that emerged during the London Summit on Family Planning.

The meeting’s attendees included high-level government officials, donor organizations, health and development NGOs, faith-based organizations, and private institutions, among others. It brought together the worlds of policy, finance, commodity, and service delivery to discuss ways to make family planning a global priority – by revitalizing commitments to family planning, increasing access to contraceptive supplies, and removing barriers that prevent women from accessing these vital services.

Reflecting the diversity of the attendees, speakers at the summit included representatives from governments, donor organizations, and private industry. A highlight of the summit was Melinda Gates’s speech during the afternoon plenary session. She began by announcing that the Gates Foundation will commit an additional $560 million dollars to family planning efforts between now and 2020 (twice what they are currently spending on family planning). Ms. Gates talked about the importance of world leaders committing to innovation on behalf of women. She encouraged leaders to think about family planning from the perspective of women, and that this would lead to real innovation.