The INFO Project Blog

In light of INFO Project’s online discussion forum on female condom programming in low-resource settings, we thought it appropriate to highlight a recent Lancet Global Health Network’s article featuring a report on U.S. foreign policy’s role on the acquisition and promotion of female condoms in the prevention of HIV/AIDS. The Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) recently released this report presenting an overview of the female condom, its role in the prevention of HIV, the challenges faced in making the contraceptive accessible, and a thorough explanation of U.S. and global policies that affect the use and promotion of the female condom.

The report summarizes a number of peer-reviewed articles and also features opinions from female condom experts and organizations. The article concludes with a number of evidence-based recommendations for U.S. and U.S. agencies’ support in the procurement, distribution and advocacy of female condoms and removal of existing barriers hindering women’s access to these potentially life-saving contraceptives.

Several INFO staffers journeyed to Washington to attend the two-day FP forum, Strengthening Family Planning Services through Operations Research: Lessons Learned and Future Directions, in the Reagan Rotunda building. The sessions, sponsored by FRONTIERS and ACCESS-FP, were chock full of new ideas. What to do, what to do? For starters, we thought we’d rattle off a a few choice tidbits.

Five Pithy Quotes

1. “The theme of this meeting might be the blurring of family planning” –Ian Askew, on the growing emphasis on integrating services with HIV/AIDS voluntary counseling and testing as well as maternal and child health services.
2. “If you know a woman who got pregnant when she was not meaning to, raise your hand [most hands up]. That’s why we are here today” –Catharine McKaig, ACCESS-FP/JHPIEGO, about why postpartum family planning is so important.
3. “And we are all family planning wallahs here,” –M.E. Khan, Population Council, India, saying that even he is skeptical that family planning should always have a role in antenatal care services.
4. “It’s the year of living dangerously” — Holly Blanchard, ACCESS-FP/JHPIEGO, about the first postpartum year, when providers may not prescribe a hormonal method because bleeding has not resumed. During this year, the risk of pregnancy is very high.
5. “They say LAM is an old wives tale”–Marcos Arevalo, Population Council, Mexico, about policymakers’ reluctance to endorse and support breastfeeding as a modern family planning method.

Four Surprising Statistics (or, why operations research matters!)

1. 61% of HIV-positive adolescents used no contraceptive method during first sex (Harriet Birungi, Population Council, Kenya, during a presentation on the family planning needs of HIV-positive youth).
2. Every year in Africa, 250,000 women die every year in childbirth (Annie Mwangi, Population Council, Kenya, explaining midwives’ crucial role in expanding service delivery).
3. Cost of IUD insertion right after delivery is as low as $2.14 (John Pile, ACQUIRE/EngenderHealth, on long-acting and permanent contraceptive methods during postpartum period).
4. Women using LAM were 20 times less likely to be pregnant 1 year after another pregnancy than women who had not been using the lactational amenorrhea method, or exclusive breastfeeding to prevent pregnancy after birth to baby’s six month birthday (Marcos Arevalo, Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University). Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie Sinclair, one of global health’s most powerful lenswomen, has photographed children forced into marriage as young as eight. Her intimate portraits of girls in Nepal, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, first published in the the New York Times Magazine, have won accolades from UNICEF. Now, combined with priceless audio recordings of these girls’ stories, the images become yet more powerful in a The Bride Price: Consequences of Child Marriage Worldwide, a 6 minute video that you can watch on the International Center for Research on Women’s YouTube channel.

Vermont-based Population Media Center (PMC), run by Education-Entertainment pioneer Bill Ryerson, has just launched a new Web site with blogging and loads of multimedia. PMC’s programs are featured in INFO’s new report on Communication for Better Health, as well as this one on Entertainment-Education, and have been highlighted on the BBC Health Check program as well.

Below is a video of PMC’s work with UNFPA in Nigeria. Tune in to view Behavior Change Communication-oriented soap operas from some of the 15 countries PMC has worked in, including India, Ethiopia, and Jamaica.

SING MUSIC VIDEO

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On World AIDS Day, December 1, 2007, a charity record titled “Sing” was released globally to raise money and awareness for the activist HIV/AIDS organization, Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The organization campaigns for treatment for people with HIV and to reduce new HIV infections.

Singer Annie Lennox teamed up with 22 other female superstar singers to record a song that Lennox had written, “Sing.” Some of the other singers include Madonna, Celine Dion, Pink, Shakira, Dido, Faith Hill, Joss Stone, and Melissa Etheridge. The “Sing Campaign” also encourages people to get involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS by, for example, donating directly to TAC, organizing events to raise money for TAC, hosting the “Sing” banner on other Web sites, raising awareness about the Sing Campaign and HIV/AIDS by word-of-mouth, and educating children in schools about HIV/AIDS. Watch the “Sing” music video on “MySpaceTV Videos.”

As one of the authors of the recently published Population Reports issue on behavior change communication programs (“Communication for Better Health”), this campaign caught my eye for a number of different reasons. First and foremost, the campaign design of using popular music by well-known singers gives the campaign great potential for success. Read the rest of this entry »