High-Impact Practices in Family Planning

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High-impact practices in family planning (HIPs) are promising or best practices that, when scaled up and institutionalized, will maximize investments in a comprehensive family planning strategy. HIPs help family planning programs focus their resources and efforts to ensure they have the broadest reach and greatest impact. K4Health is working with USAID to collect data on programs which use these practices and to maintain a website devoted to HIPs.

A technical advisory group convened by USAID identified two interrelated categories of HIPs: (1) creating an enabling environment and (2) high-impact practices in service delivery.

Creating an enabling environment, through practices such as developing supportive government policies and strengthening capacity to lead and manage family planning programs, facilitates implementation of high-impact practices in service delivery, for example, to support community health workers in providing a wide range of contraceptive methods and to extend the reach of services through mobile clinical outreach.

Visit the HIP site for the full list of HIPs and to use an interactive online map showing who, what, when, where, and how HIPs are being implemented in the field. The map helps family planning programmers around the world connect with each other and learn from each other’s successes and challenges. If you are implementing HIPs, you can add your program to the map.

Blog post

May 10, 2013
Bangladesh Knowledge Management Initiative: Access on the frontlines

Originally appearing on the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative (GHKC) Blog, this post by Basil Safi describes a pilot eHealth program in Bangladesh that equips community health workers with Netbooks loaded with behavior change communication materials rigorously vetted by the Bangladesh Knowledge Management Initiative (BKMI) and the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOFW). Basil discussed the pilot project at the Global Health Knowledge Management Share Fair last month, and it was recently highlighted on USAID's Impact Blog in a post by Monica Bautista and Peggy D'Adamo.

BKMI will help providers access the latest resources to better counsel their clients on family planning (FP), maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) and nutrition.

© 2011 Cassandra Mickish/CCP, Courtesy of Photoshare

Under the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project, the Bangladesh Knowledge Management Initiativeworks to build the capacity of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) in Bangladesh to improve knowledge management and coordinate behavior change communication (BCC) in the country. BKMI collaborated with MOHFW to establish the gold standard of BCC for health, population and nutrition and make the best tools and resources available in an offline, digital format to health workers in the field. BKMI is using a rigorous monitoring and evaluation plan to assess the impact of this pilot project.

During the Global Health Knowledge Collaborative's Knowledge Management Share Fair on April 16th in Washington, DC, I explained that as part of the initiative, 300 community-level health workers in the Sylhet and Chittagong districts will receive netbooks pre-loaded with HPN BCC eToolkits and eight eLearning courses to use when counseling clients about family planning (FP), maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) and nutrition. The digital resources will also be made available on computers in 42 health complexes, 12 clinics and two Agriculture Information Communication Centers. By the end of the pilot, a robust evaluation will look for changes in field workers’ knowledge and BCC skills, as well as their clients’ intention to adopt healthier behaviors around FP, MNCH and nutrition.

Global Health Knowledge Collaborative (GHKC)
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Event

September 25, 2013 (All day) to September 27, 2013 (All day)
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Tanzania National Family Planning Conference

The theme for the conference is “Local Solutions to Local Problems: Advancing the Evidence-Base for Repositioning Family Planning in Tanzania”. The theme seeks to emphasize the importance of generating local evidence-based solutions to local problems to inform evidence-based programming and decision-making. It also examines the interface between researchers, practitioners and managers, and how these key stakeholders can best work together to improve access to safe and effective family planning services.
Event

August 26, 2013 (All day) to August 31, 2013 (All day)
Busan, Republic of Korea
XXVII International Population Conference

In conjunction with the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). Over 2000 scientific papers presented in 270 regular sessions, 4 poster sessions, and 4 plenary sessions on topics in 21 themes including reproductive health, mortality, longevity and health, population ageing, migration, union formation and marriage, as well as themes addressing the interrelationship between population, development and the environment.
Publications & Resources

March 05, 2013
USAID Resource Guide for Family Planning

From the "Background Information" section: "The key aim of the guide is to pull together, in one place, key resources for Family Planning (FP) programming and advocacy at the country level. The guide provides an array of widely referenced resources in FP. Included are documents that explain the rationale and benefits of investing in FP, as well as more detailed programmatic and policy resources."
Blog post

January 04, 2013
Family Planning 2020 Advances in 2013

From the end of 2012 and into the New Year, the global health community looked back on the commitments made at the London Summit on Family Planning and looked ahead to achieving the goals announced at the Summit. While the July event was a highlight in global development for 2012, Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) will to continue to frame our discussions as governments, civil society, and technical institutions move toward the target: deliver contraceptives, information, and services to a total of 380 million women and girls.

Check out these videos from the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program on the importance of maintaining the momentum of FP2020:

London Summit on Family Planning
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Event

May 22, 2013 (All day) to May 25, 2013 (All day)
Copenhagen, Denmark
First global conference on contraception, reproductive and sexual health

The conference will focus on empowering women and all aspects of sexual and reproductive health.
Event

May 14, 2013 (All day) to May 16, 2013 (All day)
Nanyuki, Kenya
International Seminar: Is access enough? Understanding and addressing unmet need in Family Planning

This seminar will bring together scientists, policy makers, and programme managers to present and discuss a range of issues relating to the definition, determinants and consequences of unmet need in family planning and programme interventions designed specifically to reduce unmet need in groups at high risk.
Event

April 11, 2013 (All day) to April 13, 2013 (All day)
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Population Association of America 2013 Annual Meeting

This meeting will touch on a number of themes such as Fertility, Family Planning, Sexual Behavior, and Reproductive Health.
Blog post

July 25, 2012
Eight Practices that Will Maximize Investments in Family Planning Programs
Family planning experts from USAID, UNFPA, WHO, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and 14 nongovernmental and private organizations met on July 9-10, 2012, ahead of the landmark London Summit on Family Planning, to review evidence around high-impact practices in family planning (HIPs).

Mothers in Nampula, Mozambique take their children for vaccination.

© 2003 Arturo Sanabria, Courtesy of Photosh

Meeting at UNFPA headquarters in New York, the participants discussed evidence on eight specific practices that, when scaled up and institutionalized, will maximize investments in family planning programs:

Provide family planning counseling and services at the same time and location where women receive treatment for complications related to abortion. Many postabortion clients have a clear need and demand for family planning, and strong evidence demonstrates that providing family planning services at the same time and location where women receive postabortion treatment is feasible, acceptable, and effective.

Train, equip, and support community health workers (CHWs) to provide a wide range of contraceptive methods. CHWs can be an important means of reducing inequities in access to services, especially in areas where individuals face physical and social barriers to health services.

Provide a wide range of contraceptive methods through mobile outreach services—services provided by a mobile team of trained providers such as physicians and nurses, sometimes in a vehicle such as a van or bus that is equipped with clinic facilities. Mobile outreach provides services to women and men in the communities where they live and work, as do CHWs. While CHWs provide a limited range of contraceptive methods, such as oral contraceptives, condoms, and sometimes injectables, mobile outreach services have the added benefit of giving people direct access to long-acting and permanent methods (LAPMs).
London Summit on Family Planning
UNFPA
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Blog post

June 25, 2012
New Study Reveals Increasing Unmet Need for Family Planning in the World’s Poorest Countries

A new study by the Guttmacher Institute and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reveals that the efforts of global family planning programs fall far short of what is needed to effectively address unmet need for family planning in the developing world. The authors of Adding it Up: Costs and Benefits of Contraceptive Services—Estimates for 2012 estimate that the level of unmet need for contraception—defined as the number of fecund, sexually active women who wish to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern contraception—fell only slightly from 226 million in 2008 to 222 million in 2012. Alarmingly, in the world’s 69 poorest countries—home to 73% of all women with unmet need—the number of women with unmet need for contraception has actually increased from 153 million to 162 million since 2008.

A smiling woman in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania. © 2011 Arturo Sanabria, Courtesy of Photoshare

While the number of women in the developing world using modern contraceptive methods rose from 603 million to 645 million between 2008 and 2012, a closer look at these numbers reveals that more than half of this increase is due simply to population growth rather than to a higher contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR). CPR increased more noticeably during this time period in Eastern Africa (from 20% to 27%) and Southeast Asia (from 50% to 56%) than in Western Africa and Middle Africa, where little change was observed and fewer than 10% of married women currently use modern contraceptive methods.

Guttmacher Institute
UNFPA
Unmet Needs
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