Elements of Family Planning Success

This is a course for health care providers on postpartum care and family planning authored by ACCESS-FP.

This online training course is based on the issue of Population Reports, "Elements of Success in Family Planning Programming." It summarizes the core factors contributing to success in family planning programming, as identified by family planning professionals around the world. It highlights program experiences, best practices, and lessons learned. These guiding principles can help family planning professionals plan new programs, make improvements to existing programs, and prepare for future developments and challenges. The course is free and available to all who are interested.

Family Health International's Contraceptive and Reproductive Health Technologies and Research Utilization (CRTU) program is pleased to announce the release of a new family planning checklist for screening clients who want to initiate the use of contraceptive implants.

This matrix can assist technical experts, program managers, health providers, peer educators and others to determine what topics and interventions best fit into their own respective programs while taking cultural paradigms into consideration. The depth of each topic should be viewed within the context of a continuous process, wherein a young person’s knowledge base continues to evolve as they pass through each progressive age group. Although the topics may be the same, the information provided will differ by age.

This document provides a strategic framework for youth reproductive health (YRH) and family planning (FP) and its integration into youth development programs. This framework can be adapted to the local context of any program.

A large gap still exists between the spheres of research and practice, leading to delays of a decade or longer before widespread use of conclusive evidence. The "Menu of Practices" aims to bridge this gap by ensuring that policy-makers, health practitioners, and other decision-makers are able to quickly and efficiently access, understand, and implement recommendations stemming from new and under-used research findings in reproductive health and family planning.

This document from the ACCESS-FP Program graphically outlines when various contraceptive methods can be initiated during the postpartum period.

The Balanced Counseling Strategy (BCS) was developed by the Population Council to improve client–provider interaction in family planning provision. The process, tested and refined in several countries, involves a set of steps to determine the method that best suits the client according to her/his preferences and reproductive health intentions.

This kit provides information and tools with which decision-makers can advocate for and initiate community-based distribution (CBD) of the injectable contraceptive depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA or Depo-Provera). Drawing on research and programs from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the kit presents seven briefs with evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of CBD provision of DMPA. It discusses best practices for successful CBD of DMPA provision, such as training, counseling, and ensuring supply.

To make informed contraceptive choices, clients require an accurate understanding of pregnancy risks. As a result of an earlier USAID-supported study by FHI showing that a simplified counseling chart can improve women's understanding of contraceptive effectiveness better than more complex tools can, a panel of experts from USAID, the INFO Project JHU/CCP, EngenderHealth, and FHI drafted this chart, which presents contraceptive methods on a continuum of effectiveness. The chart is also available in French and Spanish.