PRH Connect - January 2014

PRH Connect

Welcome

PRH Connect serves as your comprehensive guide to the latest news and developments in the many issues affecting USAID programming in family planning and reproductive health.

News and Updates

Costed Implementation Plans for Family Planning

Photo of young kids
Pierre Holtz, UNICEF, Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team

With USAID support, the Health Policy Project worked with various partners [PDF, 1.5MB], including the Ouagadougou Partnership and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to develop a 10-step approach to creating costed implementation plans (CIPs) for family planning that align with ongoing government planning and coordination efforts. CIPs have been designed to achieve the goals of a national family planning program over a set number of years. These 10 steps will result in a consensus-driven strategy, roadmap and budget for achieving family planning goals under the Ouagadougou Partnership, FP2020 and other national programs. To date, the following countries have completed CIPs for family planning: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, Mauritania, Guinea and Zambia.

Joint Consensus Statement of Postabortion Family Planning

USAID joined the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the International Confederation of Midwives, the International Council of Nurses, White Ribbon Alliance, the UK’s Department for International Development and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in issuing a joint consensus statement on the importance of family planning service provision to women when they are treated for postabortion complications.

2013 Statement from the Bellagio Group on LARCs

USAID joined other members of the Bellagio Group in calling on global and national family planning communities to expand access to highly effective, long-acting, reversible contraception (LARC) for women and adolescent girls within the full range of contraceptive choice, and provides recommendations for achieving these goals.

Family Planning in Eastern Europe and Eurasia: A Legacy Of Change

Photo of a mother holidng a baby
World Bank

USAID invested in family planning and reproductive health programs in Eastern Europe and Eurasia to increase access to and use of comprehensive family planning information, contraception and services and to reduce reliance on abortion. Today, family planning counseling and services are now more widely available, and the quality of services has significantly improved. Abortion rates have fallen by more than half in many countries in the region, while modern contraceptive prevalence has increased. A paper is available for download that describes USAID’s contributions to family planning and reproductive health in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, focusing on experiences in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine.

PROGRESS End-of-Project Report

USAID’s Program Research for Strengthening Services (PROGRESS) project improved access to family planning methods and services among underserved populations in developing countries through research, research utilization and capacity building. The PROGRESS End-of-Project Report summarizes PROGRESS successes and contributions to meeting the family planning needs of underserved populations.

New Awards

The Expanding Effective Contraceptive Options Project

USAID awarded the Expanding Effective Contraceptive Options project to WomanCare Global, in partnership with Evofem, Population Services International, Everyone Mobile and the International Center for Research on Women. The goal of the project is to produce roadmaps to advance the introduction of five new woman-initiated vaginal contraceptive products.

The Contraceptive Rings Project

Photo of three young people
The Population Council, Inc.

USAID awarded the Family of Contraceptive Rings project to the Population Council with the goal of expanding the availability of the progesterone vaginal ring and completing development of the new 1-year contraceptive vaginal ring.

The EVIDENCE Project

In October, USAID awarded a cooperative agreement to the Strengthening Family Planning/Reproductive Health Programming through Implementation Science (EVIDENCE) project, which will be led by the Population Council in collaboration with a consortium of partners. The partners include Management Sciences for Health, PATH, Population Reference Bureau, International Planned Parenthood Federation and INDEPTH Network. EVIDENCE focuses on generating, translating and using evidence to strengthen and scale up evidence-based family planning and reproductive health services in PRH priority countries.

The FACT Project

Georgetown’s Institute for Reproductive Health received an award of $19.8 million from USAID for a 5-year project on fertility awareness and family planning in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. FACT (Fertility Awareness for Community Transformation) is a research, intervention and technical assistance project that will test two primary hypotheses: 1) Improved fertility awareness among women and men increases the use of family planning; and 2) Expanding the availability of fertility awareness-based methods increases family planning uptake.

Resources

Publications & Research

Recent Blogs and Success Stories

If you have questions or comments, please contact Jane Silcock at jsilcock@usaid.gov.

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