Elements of Family Planning Success

CARE’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Team is pleased to share our new case study, Keneya Ciwara: Supporting Family Planning in Mali. This case study highlights a program in Mali’s capital, Bamako, that seeks to increase the availability and demand for quality health services at the community level while improving essential health practices in the household. The success of this program depends largely on its system of outreach workers who serve as grassroots advocates for family planning.

Save the Children began working in Malawi in 1983, and in the southern Mangochi district in 1993. Among its earliest concerns in Mangochi was adolescent reproductive and sexual health. In 1999, SC launched Nchanda ni Nchanda (Youth to Youth), a five-year program that used an array of approaches to improve the reproductive and sexual health of people aged 10 to 25.

Minnesota International Health Volunteers (MIHV) is improving family planning knowledge, access, and use in Ssembabule and Mubende, two rural districts of central Uganda. MIHV's Uganda Child Spacing Program (UCSP, 2006-2009) is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and supported by the Uganda Ministry of Health.

World Vision's innovation in this project was a timed and targeted approach to behavior change communication (BCC) for all project components. That is, BCC on health, nutrition and family planning was timed to a woman's stage of pregnancy, the age of her infant and/or the fertility intentions of the couple. It was targeted to decision-makers in the family, including but not solely to the individual who might accept a contraceptive method.

The cell phone is changing life in Africa in ways we never could have predicted.

This case study explores the lessons learned in using cell phone technology as a powerful tool to share information on family planning and reproductive health to men and women alike. Learn how cell phones have been included in the health education toolkit in a country devoid of a communications infrastructure, including standard telephone networks.

In 2004, the ACQUIRE Project in Guinea, in partnership with the country’s Ministry of Health (MOH), implemented a three-phase project to increase access to and awareness of long-acting and permanent methods of family planning (LAPMs) particularly the intrauterine device (IUD), and to increase the MOH’s capacity to provide these services.

This case study documents CARE’s Extra Mile Initiative that brought education and family planning services to remote communes in Madagascar located in conservation zones that were threatened by the growing population (English version).

This case study highlights the development of a right-based approach to health in a rural and indigenous region of Peru (Spanish version).

This case study highlights the development of a right-based approach to health in a rural and indigenous region of Peru (English version).

This case study reviews how CARE and USAID introduced a family planning program to a remote, war-torn province in the DRC and describes the results achieved and lessons learned (French version).