Family Planning Integration

Why integrate family planning into health and nonhealth programs?

Integrated reproductive health and family planning (RH/FP) programming is a cost-effective, client-centered way to increase client access to information and services. When health and nonhealth agencies include RH/FP services and/or information in their programs, the resulting increase in the number of service delivery points leads to fewer missed opportunities, greater continuity of care, increased RH/FP access, and the sense on the part of clients that services are responsive to and respectful of their needs. Integration is a powerful way to reach women, men, and youth who may not otherwise seek RH/FP care, but whose RH/FP needs may be especially great—underserved groups such as women in need of postpartum or postabortion care services, at-risk youth, married adolescents, low-income and geographically difficult-to-reach couples, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs), and internally displaced people and refugees (IDP/Rs).

How does ESD integrate family planning?

ESD and its predecessor projects, Advance Africa (AA) and CATALYST, have used a variety of integration strategies to bring RH/FP services to health and nonhealth programs already accessed by underserved target groups. Advance Africa, for example, integrated RH/FP information into life-skills education programs in Mozambique, Senegal, and Zimbabwe; integrated FP methods and counseling into community- and hospital-level voluntary HIV counseling and testing (VCT) services and services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Zambia and Zimbabwe; and integrated FP information and services into the environmental programs of the Jane Goodall Institute in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

ESD continues to implement integration models—from the simple incorporation of information about healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy, to the provision of information about referrals for available methods, to counseling and actual method provision. At its most complex and effective, integration involves a coordinated, multisectoral approach where a broad cross section of society is targeted for information, referral, and services through a multitude of reinforcing channels. Integration at this level can lead to widespread, sustainable changes in community norms and service use. CATALYST used this approach in Egypt, where it integrated RH/FP and birth spacing into MCH, postpartum, postabortion, literacy, agriculture/irrigation extension, and microcredit programs; addressed RH/FP in dramas, puppet shows, and community events; and inspired religious leaders, the press, political leaders, youth, and others to become RH/FP champions.

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