Advance Family Planning (AFP): An Advocacy Project to Increase Access to Quality Family Planning Services

Overview

Advance Family Planning (AFP) is an evidence-based, three-year effort designed to help developing countries achieve universal access to reproductive health (MDG 5b). It aims to revitalize family planning programs through increased and more effective funding, and improved policy commitments at the local, national, and global levels. AFP is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The AFP Consortium is led by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health Bill & Melinda Gates Institute. Partners include the Center for Communication Programs at JHU, African Women’s Development Fund, Partners in Population and Development, and Futures Group International.

AFP’s goal is to increase funding and improve policy commitments at all levels of national governments, among bilateral and multilateral donors, and the private sector. It builds on past investments and ongoing activities in reproductive health advocacy, leadership development, knowledge generation, and innovative service delivery projects.

The project focuses on providing policy makers with evidence on why family planning is a sound investment with dividends in terms of health, socio-economic development, the environment, and other areas. The message and the messengers will reflect each country’s situation and the interests of those policy makers.

Accomplishments

To achieve its goals, strengthen Southern advocates and create sustainable advocacy platforms, AFP has developed three distinct, but interrelated approaches:

Mobilize and strengthen sustainable family planning/reproductive health advocacy with catalytic investments in Tanzania, Uganda, and Indonesia, countries with potential for wider replication of the AFP approach in other developing countries

Strengthen existing family planning/reproductive health advocacy investments in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal by providing cutting edge and highly specialized technical assistance.

Voices from the South—leverage voices of Global South champions regionally and globally to demand revitalization of family planning/reproductive health agenda to achieve MDG 5b and to create a platform for greater South-to-South cooperation.