Family Planning

This report is designed as a general resource to help family planning program managers strengthen their programs and meet growing family planning needs…It offers a broad overview of key programmatic considerations. Each subsection includes a list of practical specialized resources and hands-on tools that can support program managers desiring to bring about programmatic change…

To identify problems and barriers to [family planning] services specific to each district, to provide data that could assist with project implementation, and to allow determination of benchmarks and targets to measure success, the project started with a baseline assessment of facilities, providers, and community members in the five core districts. The objectives of the assessment were to evaluate factors contributing to the current use of FP services, including: the supply of FP in the public and private sectors: the availability and quality of facilities providing FP services, including the availability of contraceptive methods, IEC materials, and trained providers; and the demand for FP: the population’s knowledge of, attitudes toward, and practice of pregnancy prevention.

In family planning programs, good face-to-face interaction between the client and providers is key to meeting clients’ needs and program goals. Programs can best improve client-provider interaction (CPI) when they move beyond just training providers and strengthen CPI continuously in multiple ways. [summary]

As the private sector plays an increasingly critical role in the delivery of reproductive health/family planning (RH/FP) services, donors and public health ministries are turning their attention to business arrangements that offer the potential to increase access to high-quality priority health services. Private provider networks hold the promise of cost effectively expanding the scale of private practice, and are increasingly being considered as a way to achieve national public health objectives.

This case study documents Indonesia’s family planning experience with a view to understanding the factors and conditions that led to the remarkable growth in the private sector’s role in delivering family planning services. [from abstract]

This primer introduces key aspects of contracting and summarizes key lessons from countries’ experiences in contracting-out. In doing so, it is intended to serve the practical needs of contracting practicioners in developing countries that are considering contracting as a way to deliver RH/FP services. Intended users include country-level decision makers, contract operation managers, and mission officers and advisers from donor agencies. [publisher’s description]

Donor funds may be inadequate to support the growing demand for services provided by community-based distribution (CBD) programs. One solution may be to reduce the remuneration of CBD agents, but this approach may lower their productivity. Programs also need to consider reducing other costs, including those for supervision and training. The cost per agent visit—including costs associated with payments to agents and to supervisors and the costs of training—was calculated for three CBD programs in Tanzania. The output measure was visits in which contraceptives were provided or referrals made for family planning services.

What makes one training experience better than another? Effective training can help providers of family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) services to improve their performance. This handbook summarizes the tasks that should be completed at each stage of training to ensure an effective training course.

This study assessed the impact of management training in the performance of managers from agencies in Bangladesh delivering primary healthcare services. [from abstract]