Elements of Family Planning Success

 This is a one year Web-based activity that the INFO Project has developed so that program managers around the world can come together to learn about evidence-based family planning information. It is a place where program managers can share their successes and lessons learned, network with people around the world, solve problems, bounce ideas off each other, and ultimately create a better program. 
 
We felt this topic lent itself to discussion and collaboration between people who are working on family planning programming. Instead of us reviewing the research and coming to conclusions about what makes a program successful, we felt it would be best to start with creating a community of family planning programmers to come together and share ideas and opinions about what they feel makes a program successful. 
 
From there we plan to combine those lessons learned and experiences with the evidence-based information and the research that has been conducted. We'll channel it all into this Web site and subsequently a print Population Reports issue.
 
We launched this project with an online survey using the Zoomerang survey platform.  We surveyed family planning programmers around the world on what they feel to be the most important elements of successful family planning programs and which elements are the hardest to achieve. We ended up reaching about 500 programmers around the world in 98 countries. From there we were able to identify the top 10 most important elements. We have developed this site based on those top ten elements.
 
We followed the survey with a two-week online forum discussion using the Implementing Best Practices Knowledge Gateway. Each day we discussed one or two of the top ten elements. We posed questions to the community.
 
280 health care professionals around the world and nearly 60 countries were involved in the discussion. So each day, in response to our question about the element, they would respond with their experiences and ideas about that element.
 
This Web site is designed to take advantage of all the new Web tools that are available--including social networking tools. It's not just a static site where people can go to find information; it's a site where they can go to collaborate, share ideas and interact with others.