Family Planning

Why Bold Policies for Family Planning are Needed Now

Malcolm Potts
Rachel Weinrib
Martha Campbell
2013

Last spring at a Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) talk in Berlin, Melinda Gates used this phrase, “The most transformative thing you can do is to give people access to birth control.” She expressed similar sentiments at the London Summit on Family Planning on July 11, 2012, as did the British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Andrew Mitchell who was then Secretary of State for the Department for International Development, the British equivalent of United States Agency for International Development. The London Summit represented a new focus on international family planning after...

Population and Climate Change: Empowering 100 Million Women

Malcolm Potts
Alisha Graves
2013

Meeting the world’s need for family planning is a human right and a climate imperative. Wherever women have been given information and access to family planning, birth rates have fallen – even in poor, low-literate societies like Bangladesh or conservative religious countries such as Iran.

Published in The United Nations Climate Change Conference – Cop19 & CMP9 2013; 30-31.

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Meeting Rural Demand: A Case for Combining Community-Based Distribution and Social Marketing of Injectable Contraceptives in Tigray, Ethiopia

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Ashley Fraser
Amanuel Gessessew
2013

Background

In Sub-Saharan Africa, policy changes have begun to pave the way for community distribution of injectable contraceptives but sustaining such efforts remains challenging. Combining social marketing with community-based distribution provides an opportunity to recover some program costs and compensate workers with proceeds from contraceptive sales. This paper proposes a model for increasing access to injectable contraceptives in rural settings by using community-based distributers as social marketing agents and incorporating financing systems to improve...

Potential for Cost Recovery: Women’s Willingness to Pay for Injectable Contraceptives in Tigray, Ethiopia

Ndola Prata
Suzanne Bell
Karen Weidert
Amanuel Gessessew
2013

Objective

To investigate factors associated with a woman’s willingness to pay (WTP) for injectable contraceptives in Tigray, Ethiopia.

Methods

We used a multistage random sampling design to generate a representative sample of reproductive age women from the Central Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia to participate in a survey (N = 1490). Respondents who had ever used injectable contraceptives or who were interested in using them were asked whether they would be willing to pay, and if so, how much. Logistic regression odds ratios (ORs) with 95%...

Increasing Access to Injectable Contraceptives in Ethiopia

VSI
UC Berkeley Bixby Center
2010

In Ethiopia the unmet need for family planning is one of the highest in the world; 34% of women who desire to control their fertility lack access to a modern form of contraception.

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Getting family planning and population back on track

Malcolm Potts
2014

After a generation of partial neglect, renewed attention is being paid to population and voluntary family planning. Realistic access to family planning is a prerequisite for women’s autonomy. For the individual, family, society, and our fragile planet, family planning has great power.

Published in Global Health: Science and Practice 2014; 2(2), 145-51.

Read more https://www.ghspjournal.org/content/2/2/145

Potential for Cost Recovery: Women’s Willingness to Pay for Injectable Contraceptives in Tigray, Ethiopia

Ndola Prata
Suzanne Bell
Karen Weidert
Amanuel Gessessew
2015

Objective

To investigate factors associated with a woman’s willingness to pay (WTP) for injectable contraceptives in Tigray, Ethiopia.

Methods

We used a multistage random sampling design to generate a representative sample of reproductive age women from the Central Zone of Tigray, Ethiopia to participate in a survey (N = 1490). Respondents who had ever used injectable contraceptives or who were interested in using them were asked whether they would be willing to pay, and if so, how much. Logistic regression odds ratios (ORs) with 95%...

Training traditional birth attendants on the use of misoprostol and a blood measurement tool to prevent postpartum haemorrhage: lessons learnt from Bangladesh

Ndola Prata
Suzanne Bell
Paige Passano
Daniel Bohl
Arshadul Islam
2015

A consensus emerged in the late 1990s among leaders in global maternal health that traditional birth attendants (TBAs) should no longer be trained in delivery skills and should instead be trained as promoters of facility-based care. Many TBAs continue to be trained in places where home deliveries are the norm and the potential impacts of this training are important to understand. The primary objective of this study was to gain a more nuanced understanding of the full impact of training TBAs to use misoprostol and a blood measurement tool (mat) for the prevention of postpartum...

An Integrated Approach to Livelihoods and Family Planning

Ndola Prata
C. Chessin-Yudin
2016

Climate change will disproportionately affect the poor in the future, nowhere more so than in the fragile ecological zone known as the Sahel. The Sahel has been plagued with droughts, decreasing crop yields, and increasing environmental degradation (World Bank, 2013). This paper will empirically demonstrate that an integrated intervention, coupling access to family planning (FP) and livelihoods interventions will lead to food security and better health outcomes in the Sahel. The hypothesis outlined in this paper will show that by combining FP and livelihood interventions, a...

Postpartum family planning: current evidence on successful interventions

Ndola Prata
Cassandra Blazer
2016

We reviewed existing evidence of the efficacy of postpartum family planning interventions targeting women in the 12 months postpartum period in low- and middle-income countries. We searched for studies from January 1, 2004 to September 19, 2015, using the US Preventive Services Task Force recommendations to assess evidence quality. Our search resulted in 26 studies: 11 based in sub-Saharan Africa, six in the Middle East and North Africa, and nine in Asia. Twenty of the included studies assessed health facility-based interventions. Three were focused on community interventions, two...