Rapid repeat pregnancy among adolescents: an opportunity to address unmet need for contraception and improve health and social outcomes among adolescents and their children

SpeakerMaureen Norton USAID

Eighteen million adolescents give birth each year, with 90% occurring within marriage. These pregnancies are usually intended – or at least, expected, as adolescents are often under tremendous pressure from spouses, family members and the community to demonstrate fertility. Once having given birth, many adolescents become pregnant with a second child less than two years later, a phenomenon which has been referred to as "rapid repeat pregnancy." Rapid repeat pregnancies have a range of negative health and social effects on children and adolescent mothers. However, the majority of the adolescent pregnancy prevention interventions focus on unintended pregnancy, and few first time mothers are approached by health care providers to discuss contraception and spacing of future pregnancies, despite the interest of young mothers in birth spacing. This panel will include findings from qualitative research to promote healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy with young married women in Nigeria, a review of the global evidence and lessons from intervention studies designed to prevent rapid repeat pregnancy, and a discussion of current research to identify effective approaches to preventing rapid repeat pregnancy. Learn more »

Family Planning Calling: How innovative mobile technologies are training, supporting and incentivizing health workers who provide family planning services

ModeratorMargaret D'Adamo USAID

Digital health – and especially mobile health – is a growing field to support training, information sharing and supportive supervision for frontline health workers. According to the International Telecommunication Union in 2014, 90.2% of people living in low- and middle -income countries have access to a mobile phone. Capitalizing on the proliferation of mobile phones and the value of using mobile technology to support health workers while they are at their respective posts, many programs have begun creating and adapting tools for mobile - both simple phone and smartphone- contexts. This panel will highlight three innovative approaches from Tanzania, Kenya, and India. Learn more »

Indicators and Accountability: tracking and achieving universal access to family planning through the post-2015 framework

SpeakerSandra Jordan Senior Technical Advisor for External Affairs, USAID

This panel on Post-2015 indicators and accountability for tracking and achieving universal access to family planning aims to dissect the ongoing discussions on the Post-2015 indicator framework. While the goals and targets were decided upon during the High-Level Summit in September 2015, the indicator framework will be finalized at the 47th UN Statistical Commission in March 2016. Hence, this panel comes at an opportune moment.

The experts on the panel are able to shed invaluable light on the key aspects of the indicator process including the technical and the political process, and the link to practice and applicability, monitoring and accountability. With representation from multilateral institutions, international civil society and statistical expertise from the Global South, different perspectives are included. Learn more »

Strengthening Individual and Social Assets: Can We Do Better to Address the Needs of Adolescents?

ModeratorCate Lane Youth Advisor, USAID

Never before have there been so many adolescents living in the world. Adolescents face multiple SRH risks, which are shaped by a complexity of factors. Poverty and limited educational opportunities compound existing risks and intensify the vulnerability of adolescents, particularly very young adolescents (VYA). Understanding the skills, knowledge, opportunities and resources that contribute to positive SRH and development outcomes are of increasing interest to research, program and donor communities working in the field of ASRH. This panel is designed to review current and important research and to identify gaps and a potential way forward. Learn more »

Obstacles and Opportunities for Action to Advocacy on PHE: to what degree are partnerships between family planning and conservation helping to ensure equity in FP2020 Commitments and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

ModeratorClive Mutunga USAID

Partnerships between the family planning (FP) and conservation sectors to implement integrated community-based projects have been tried and tested for almost three decades. In the last three years, a change in how these partners collaborate with one another has occurred. Community-based project implementation still sits at the core of the "Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) movement," but there is a blossoming trend in which the players start their community-level efforts with an institutional transformation endgame in mind. These newer approaches emphasize scale-up, advocacy, policy development, and the cultivation of individual champions who can articulate the complex linkages among family planning, human health, and the environment.

Meet a panel of PHE pioneers who are pushing the envelope on what is possible within these collaborations and are experimenting more than ever before with strategies that involve strong advocacy, policy, and PHE champions. Hear what promising successes they have had, and what challenges lie ahead as we continue to make the most of these creative collaborations. Learn more »

Making sure FP commodities are in place to meet demand: Using Results-Based Financing (RBF) to improve public supply system performance

SpeakerKevin Pilz Senior Supply Chain Advisor, USAID

Assuring reliable availability of family planning commodities is a key pillar of any country's family planning program. This panel will present a framework for considering the potential value of financial incentives to catalyze improved supply chain performance and will share applications of the framework and evidence of its impact in both public and commercial sectors. Supply systems in many countries are rife with stock-outs, shortages and waste, which results in unreliable availability of precious family planning commodities. The outcome of poorly performing supply systems is that people who want to access family planning may not have access to the commodities they need to space and delay pregnancies. This is a critical element of unmet need that has a management solution that results based financing can contribute to solving. Learn more »

The Balancing Act: Conversations about donors and funders resource allocations for research on contraceptive use

SpeakderEllen H. Starbird Director, Office of Population and Reproductive Health, USAID

This panel will examine where and how donors and funders decide the ways in which research on helping families plan and space their children fits into the laudable newly launched Sustainable Development Goals. It could also be useful to those who rely on funding to do evidence-based programming. Learn more »

Scaling-Up Access to quality LARC services through capacity building of public sector health care providers: Lessons from an FP Project in Nigeria

AuthorKayode Morenikeji USAID Nigeria

The Family Health plus (FH+) Project started in 2014; it is a three-year project funded by USAID. It is being implemented by a consortium of three-partners with MSION as the managing partner. The goal is to strengthen the Nigerian health system, build providers' capacity to deliver quality FP services, and motivate users to access quality FP services. One of the assumptions of the project is that by increasing demand; instilling quality of services and building the capacity of public facility FP providers; and improving logistics supply of commodities, awareness and demand for FP services in public health care facilities will increase. Learn more »

Assessing FP HIPs in Tanzania: the Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts

AuthorNandita Thatte USAID/Tanzania

A simple tool to rapidly assess the implementation of each of the FP HIPs was developed, and used as the basis for gathering feedback from all the implementing partners. The tool included information on how each HIP was implemented, what aspects were not implemented well or what was not working, and opportunities to sharpen implementation. While HIPs that support the enabling environment for family planning are ongoing in Tanzania, here we focus on the HIPs for FP service delivery. These include: mobile outreach services, postabortion FP, community health workers, social marketing, drug shops/pharmacies, and FP-immunization integration.

Innovations in contraceptive service delivery + IBP / Innovations dans la prestation de services contraceptifs + IBP

ModeratorFatou Ndiaye USAID

Many SRH organizations, either being formed or being restructured, including those led by emerging leaders, may not be aware of the tools that exist for Strategic Planning in Adolescent/Youth Family Planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health. To avoid duplication of efforts, and promote adoption of effective practices, this session will disseminate strategic planning tools already developed and tested on the ground by IBP member organizations and partners. A hands-on approach will familiarize members of youth-led and youth-serving organizations, as well as a larger audience, with an overview of the strategic planning process and a wide range of strategic planning tools, including ones designed specifically for use by youth and adolescents. Participants will have a chance for in-depth discussion with experts about how to adapt and apply the tools to enable design and implementation of effective strategic plans for their organizations. Learn more »

Workshop 6: Strategic Planning Tools for Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health

OrganizerShawn Malarcher Senior Best Practices Utilization Advisor, USAID

Many SRH organizations, either being formed or being restructured, including those led by emerging leaders, may not be aware of the tools that exist for Strategic Planning in Adolescent/Youth Family Planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health. To avoid duplication of efforts, and promote adoption of effective practices, this session will disseminate strategic planning tools already developed and tested on the ground by IBP member organizations and partners. A hands-on approach will familiarize members of youth-led and youth-serving organizations, as well as a larger audience, with an overview of the strategic planning process and a wide range of strategic planning tools, including ones designed specifically for use by youth and adolescents. Participants will have a chance for in-depth discussion with experts about how to adapt and apply the tools to enable design and implementation of effective strategic plans for their organizations.

Workshop 7: Strategic Decision-Making for more effective FP programming

OrganizerShawn Malarcher Senior Best Practices Utilization Advisor, USAID

Despite renewed commitment to family planning and reproductive health programs, critical barriers to contraceptive use remain in many countries. This interactive workshop will engage participants in conducting a root cause analysis in order to determine and prioritize barriers to contraceptive use. In addition, participants will prioritize strategies for family planning programming based on feasibility and impact analyses using a number of case studies from various countries.

Workshop 8: Understanding FP within Larger Global Initiatives in the post-2015 Era

OrganizersShawn Malarcher Senior Best Practices Utilization Advisor, USAID
Sandra Jordan Senior Technical Advisor for External Affairs, USAID
Alexandra Todd USAID

The global FP landscape has changed drastically in the past few years. New initiatives such as FP2020, the Global Financing Facility, PMNCH, EPCMD and the recently launched Sustainable Development Goals will affect how FP programs move forward in coming years. IBP partners have a role to play by prioritizing and implementing interventions with the highest impact to achieve FP and global health goals. Engagement at country level is important to achieve goals and understanding how the different initiatives are interrelated will enable partners to more effectively advocate for FP.

Update of pharmacokinetic and clinical evidence supporting an association of increased unintended pregnancy among HIV-infected women using subdermal implants and efavirenz-based antiretroviral therapy: navigating a balanced approach to policy

SpeakerCarolyn Curtis USAID

Access, Contraceptive Choice and Human Rights: Challenges and Tensions

ModeratorShawn Malarcher Senior Best Practices Utilization Advisor

"What does full choice of methods mean in the context of human rights, and how should programs respond?" Do current approaches support or restrict access to particular methods? How does this affect rights? Heightened awareness of the issue of contraceptive choice in the context of rights-based FP followed the London Summit's call for increasing access for an additional 120 million contraceptive users. Yet, calls for clients to have a full choice of methods do not include a definition of "full choice" of contraceptives. Human rights documents can provide guidance. However, programs, providers and clients may have different perspectives on method access and choice: whose perspective should prevail? Since programs have to make decisions based on resources, how should countries ensure a choice of methods? Should they expand access to an existing (generally small) range of currently available methods or introduce new ones? Learn more »

Concurrent Session 5. Reaching Young People with Contraceptive Information and Services

Organizer/PresenterShawn Malarcher Senior Best Practices Utilization Advisor, USAID

Today's generation of young people is the largest in history: there are 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24 on the planet. In many countries, more than half of the population is under age 25. Unfortunately many young people do not have access to the critical sexual and reproductive health information and services required to stay healthy and avoid unintended pregnancy. Fulfilling the unmet need for contraceptives among adolescents alone could prevent an estimated 7.4 million unintended pregnancies annually. Not only is the ability to control one's fertility a right, but also early, unintended, and mistimed pregnancies create physical and social risks for many adolescent girls – affecting their health outcomes and those of their children. Young women who avoid unintended pregnancy are more likely to stay in school; participate in the work force; and have healthier, better-educated children than their peers who begin childbearing in adolescence.