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Inside the FP Story’s Fourth Season Launches


Our Inside the FP Story podcast explores the fundamentals of designing and implementing family planning programming. We’re excited to announce the launch of our fourth season, which covers yet another important topic in family planning and reproductive health. Brought to you by Knowledge SUCCESS and MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience, Season 4 will explore how to address family planning and reproductive health within fragile settings. Over four episodes, you will hear from a variety of guests as they offer practical examples and specific guidance from diverse contexts.

Shegitu, a health extension worker, facilitates a conversation about family planning with ten women at Buture Health Post in Jimma, Ethiopia. Photo credit: Maheder Haileselassie Tadese/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment/December 3, 2019.
Shegitu, a health extension worker, facilitates a women's conversation on family planning at Buture Health Post in Jimma, Ethiopia. Photo credit: Maheder Haileselassie Tadese/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment/December 3, 2019.

Inside the FP Story is a podcast with and for the global family planning workforce. Each season, we publish honest and open conversations with family planning practitioners and researchers from around the world as they share their experiences and expertise.

For Season 4, we spoke with guests who work in fragile settings around the world. They shared examples of their programs––including what works, what does not work, and what is necessary to ensure that all people in these settings receive quality, client-centered family planning and reproductive health services.

This season, our first episode will begin by defining key concepts like fragility, health resilience, and the humanitarian-development nexus. A “fragile setting” refers to contexts that have become unstable due to sudden or ongoing conflicts, disasters, recurring weather extremes, migrations, etc., which have ripple effects on health systems and services. We unpack this, then examine the impact of fragility on family planning and reproductive health. The second episode will focus on social and gender norms, which can be even more pronounced in fragile settings. This is a topic we discussed in-depth in the previous season of the podcast, but to dive into it with the lens of fragile and humanitarian contexts, we spoke with guests with experience working in South Sudan, Ethiopia, and refugee camps in Jordan and Bangladesh. They shared opportunities for improving access to family planning information and services by first understanding each specific context, then working with communities to challenge harmful norms that impede access. In our third episode, we will explore opportunities for strengthening health resilience and improving the quality of family planning and reproductive health care for those in fragile contexts, particularly for refugee populations or those in remote locations. Finally, our fourth episode will highlight the unique challenges of adolescents and youth—as well as creative approaches and opportunities—to ensure that young people in fragile settings obtain the sexual and reproductive health services they need and want.

Tune in every Wednesday from September 21 through October 12 as we illuminate how to best address family planning programs and reproductive health in fragile settings. Want a list of relevant resources and tools for family planning in fragile settings? Check out this 20 Essentials Collection.

Inside the FP Story is available on the Knowledge SUCCESS website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can also find relevant tools and resources, along with French transcripts of each episode, at KnowledgeSUCCESS.org.

Sarah V. Harlan

Partnerships Team Lead, Knowledge SUCCESS, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Sarah V. Harlan, MPH, has been a champion of global reproductive health and family planning for more than two decades. She is currently the partnerships team lead for the Knowledge SUCCESS project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. Her particular technical interests include Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) and increasing access to longer-acting contraceptive methods. She leads the Inside the FP Story podcast and was a co-founder of the Family Planning Voices storytelling initiative (2015-2020). She is also a co-author of several how-to guides, including Building Better Programs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Knowledge Management in Global Health.

Natalie Apcar

Program Officer II, KM & Communications, Knowledge SUCCESS

Natalie Apcar is a Program Officer II at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, supporting knowledge management partnership activities, content creation, and communications for Knowledge SUCCESS. Natalie has worked for a variety of nonprofits and built a background in planning, implementation, and monitoring of public health programming, including gender integration. Other interests include youth and community-led development, which she got the chance to engage in as US Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco. Natalie earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from American University and a Master of Science in Gender, Development, and Globalization from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Brittany Goetsch

Program Officer, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Brittany Goetsch is a Program Officer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. She supports field programs, content creation, and knowledge management partnership activities. Her experience includes developing educational curriculum, training health and education professionals, designing strategic health plans, and managing large-scale community outreach events. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from The American University. She also holds a Master of Public Health in Global Health and a Masters of Arts in Latin American and Hemispheric Studies from The George Washington University.

Christopher Lindahl

Knowledge Management Lead, MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience/Pathfinder International

Christopher Lindahl is a knowledge management advisor at Pathfinder International and the knowledge management lead for USAID’s MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience. His work focuses on developing strategies, approaches, and platforms to document and share project knowledge and learning within the project as well as with the broader global health community.Before joining Pathfinder in 2020, he worked at EngenderHealth and Save the Children, supporting knowledge management, communications, and advocacy for family planning and reproductive health programs in both development and humanitarian settings. Christopher holds a Master of Public Administration degree from New York University and a bachelor’s degree in history and secondary education from Boston College.