FP insight: Discover and Curate Family Planning Resources

The Challenge: So much information!

Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

Information is coming at me every day from different sources—newsletters, websites, journal alerts, links in social media, webinars. How do I decide what’s useful, what’s relevant? I know I came across something important about postpartum family planning [or any other family planning topic!] last week or last month, but I can’t find it now. I don’t remember where I saved it or whether it was in a webinar or a report. At the same time, I feel like I keep going back to the same sources, the same partners. I know I’m missing critical information from some lesser-known sources. In summary, I’m so overwhelmed with the wealth of knowledge that’s out there about family planning and reproductive health programs, but I’m not sure I’m accessing the right information to optimize my program.

If that sounds familiar, you are not alone.

The scenario above illustrates the main knowledge management (KM) concern expressed by family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) professionals during four regional co-creation workshops hosted by Knowledge SUCCESS in mid-2020. Similar sentiments were highlighted across all four workshops—in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the United States—indicating this is a consistent KM challenge for FP/RH professionals regardless of location.

Unless you are a new Knowledge SUCCESS visitor, you may already be aware of the co-creation workshops and the important insights and ideas that came out of them. The workshops used a design thinking approach rooted in empathy and behavioral economics to help participants to identify common knowledge management barriers and challenges. These barriers and challenges limit the flow of family planning knowledge between programs, countries, and regions—but identifying them gives us opportunities to transform the way our FP/RH community approaches knowledge management.

The Opportunity: Create a tool to discover and curate family planning resources

Participants at all workshops expressed a desire for an online resource hub: somewhere to find timely resources from different projects and organizations curated in one place, save the ones that are most relevant for their particular context and needs, and easily return to them at any time.

From Prototype to Product: How design thinking helped shape FP insight

One group of participants suggested creating a new tool, inspired by Pinterest and other social media platforms, to provide a personalized space for FP/RH professionals to discover and curate family planning resources they feel are significant, relevant, and timely for their work.

From this idea, we developed the first resource discovery and curation tool for FP/RH professionals—FP insight—and we are excited to announce that the tool is now ready for you to use! The FP insight launch event took place on June 23, 2021, drawing praise and excitement from more than 270 online attendees. (If you missed the event, you may watch the recordings in English or French.)

Key Features: What you will find at FP insight

FP insight provides a personalized experience, serving information that is relevant to your needs and interests within your newsfeeds. It also provides a view into what like-minded professionals are saving related to FP/RH.

Some of the key benefits and features of FP insight include:

• Discover relevant and timely information: Start your workday with FP insight to monitor what’s trending in FP/RH. FP insight’s design features three feeds (“For You,” “Trending”, and “Following”). You can view the Trending feed even if you’re not logged into your FP insight account. But to get the best experience on FP insight, including personalized ideas on the Following and For You feeds, be sure to create an account and log in.
• Keep your favorite resources in one place: You are the expert; you know what is relevant and timely for your programs. FP insight puts you in the driver’s seat to curate your own collections so it’s easy for you to come back to the information you need when you need it.
• Follow people and collections: Don’t get stuck going back to the same sources of information. Follow other FP insight users and their collections to get exposed to new sources of information that you otherwise may not have found on your own.
• Collaborate with others: Do you have a shared interest with a peer or colleague and want to curate a collection together? Collaborative collections are a great way for FP insight users to share ideas with each other and with the broader FP insight community.
• View and read online or offline: No internet access? No problem! Save HTML web articles to your device when you do have internet access, and read them even when you are away from an internet connection.

Join the FP insight Community

Illustration of the FP insight scavenger hunt

The more our FP insight community saves and shares, the more everyone can discover and curate family planning resources that match their context and unique needs. Get started with the fun FP insight Scavenger Hunt and let us know when you have completed it to earn an Explorer Badge on your FP insight profile. Together, we can use this resource discovery and curation tool to contribute to a body of knowledge on FP insight that benefits the whole FP/RH professional community.

Learn more: Watch the introduction video below, or visit www.fpinsight.org to explore and get started.