FP/RH Champion Spotlight: Likhaan Center for Women’s Health Inc.

Organization

Likhaan Center for Women’s Health Inc.

Location

Philippines

The Work

Likhaan is a non-government, nonprofit organization established in 1995 to respond to the sexual and reproductive health needs of women experiencing poverty. It runs community-based health programs anchored on three strategies: community education and mobilization; provision of primary, integrated sexual, and reproductive health (SRH) care; and advocacy for rights-based and equitable health policies.

Likhaan advances the right to family planning (FP) and SRH through three program strategies:

1. Adult and youth-trained community health promoters, community mobilizers, and community health workers provide information, organize collective actions to address problems, and assist health providers. Health promoters make women aware of FP and other SRH challenges, community mobilizers train women to express themselves and undertake collective actions, and community health workers provide counseling and referrals to other providers and facilities. Through these layered community interventions, women are able to:

• Decide on their contraceptive options.
• Help others in their community.
• Seek collective remedies for problems, like poor quality of care, coercion, and inadequate supplies and services.

2. Nurses, midwives, and a doctor provide integrated, gender-responsive, and respectful FP and SRH care in nine community-based clinics. Apart from contraception, integrated services include:

• Maternal care.
• STIs and HIV management.
• Essential health services for violence against women.
• Adolescent and youth health care.

Providers are trained in technical skills and gender and rights so they address social issues, embedding FP and SRH needs, like:

• Economic inequity.
• Gender inequality.
• Violence.
• Sexuality stigma.
• Discrimination.

3. Based on problems identified in communities and clinics, policy advocates study and propose changes to laws and policies to make them responsive to the needs of women experiencing financial insecurity and other marginalized groups. Previously, Likhaan helped advocate for several causes, including:

• The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012.
• Comprehensive sexuality education standards in 2016.
• PhilHealth accreditation of free-standing family clinics in 2018.

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