The INFO Project Blog

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 »

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Are provider checklists for new and continuing clients useful?

We developed some suggested provider checklists for new and continuing clients. The intention behind these checklists was to give providers some help, so they have a general idea of what needs to be covered at each visit. These checklists have not been pre-tested, but given time and resource constraints in clinic settings would providers find it useful to have such checklists on hand? Or are they just another form that they would feel forced to fill out; an added burden?

Deepa Ramchandran
Research Writer

Author of the newest Population Reports issue, “Developing a Continuing-Client Strategy”

What incentives do programs have to link with other organizations to provide a continuum of care?

In the report, we talk about how creating links with other service organizations and establishing referral systems is vital to a continuing-client strategy because not all services can be or should be offered at all health facilities. Family planning programs can establish referral procedures both within facilities (as in large facilities with multiple departments) and between facilities (as when a small clinic refers services to a larger one). In a small-clinic setting, offering referral services could be as simple as having providers inform clients about alternative sources of supply, so that in the event of a stockout, they will know the nearest available source for their method. The goal is that the client receives the method she needs without a gap in protection. If we expect providers/programs to promote referrals to other providers such as pharmacists and other private-sector providers, what incentives do they have to do so when they are in effect losing their client to another provider but are still required to show results to their donors?

Deepa Ramchandran
Research Writer

Author of the newest Population Reports issue, “Developing a Continuing-Client Strategy”