The INFO Project Blog

In a recent interview about the Elements of Family Planning Success, Dr. Alan Bornbusch gives examples of national contraceptive success stories in countries including Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Dr. Bornbusch, a Public Health Adviser in USAID/Washington’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, explains the role of the supply chains and gives strategies for averting bottlenecks (supply choke points) in national contraceptive provision programs.

Zimbabwe has an innovative system that Dr. Bornbusch describes in this video. Trucks come to clinics each month with laptops to work with contraceptive supply managers to determine what supply should be for that month. Then, the supply is “topped up” to carry them through the next month.

Read the transcript of his entire interview, then tell us what you think.

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 »

INFO’s newest social networking-equipped Web site, FP Success (to be developed into an issue of Population Reports called, “the Elements of Successful Family Planning Programs) includes more than 20 interviews with family planning program experts, as well as reproductive health researchers and educators.

Listen to Margaret Neuse, Emeritus Director of USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, talk about the importance of leadership, specifically USAID’s role in leading global efforts of family planning programming. Neuse stresses the importance of training local staff for leadership.

Become a member today to comment on her interview, contribute to a forum discussion, and create your own FP Success blog.

The Elements of Family Planning Success Web site is now live. Join this community today to take part in discussions, access resources - including expert interviews, network with colleagues, find up-to-date research, and share your program success stories with family planning professionals around the world.  Go to www.fpsuccess.org to become a member.

INFO is gearing up to launch a new kind of social networking site. The Elements of Successful Family Planning Programs is more than your new bicycle. It’s your fast-tracked guide to meeting colleagues around the world, finding new evidence-based resources, and gaining insight from FP program authorities around the world who have built successful programs. Join today, and stay tuned for the site to launch next week!