Self-care in family planning
Self-care is a natural fit for family planning and specifically refers to the ability of individuals, families, and communities to promote and maintain sexual health and prevent or space pregnancies, with or without the support of a health-care provider. New medical and digital tools, products, and services allow individuals, particularly women and adolescent girls, to assess and manage their own needs in their homes or communities with support from health providers and health systems that prepares them to have greater control and decision-making in their sexual and reproductive health care. This approach creates multiple benefits not only for women and girls themselves, but also potentially for health systems.
WHO’s latest 2021 self-care guidance features several recommendations for high-quality family planning services. Recommendations include:
- Over-the-counter access to emergency contraceptive pills without a prescription
- Pregnancy self-testing
- Self-administration of injectable contraception
- Over-the-counter oral contraceptive pills without a prescription
- Male and female condoms
- Self-screening with ovulation predictor kits
Why we created this collection on self-care for family planning
Many national and subnational governments and partners around the world are key in operationalizing self-care guidance, and making rights- and evidence-based self-care options for family planning a reality for more people. The resources in this collection on self-care interventions for family planning help make the case for the role of self-care in family planning. They can also help equip partners with tools for advocacy and policy change, financing, ensuring quality of care, leveraging digital tools, collecting and using data, and addressing other specific considerations.
Criteria for this collection
To be included in this collection, a resource must be:
- Foundational to the evidence and experience base for self-care implementation in family planning.
- A “cross-cutting” resource that is applicable across family planning self-care interventions rather than just one specific method or intervention—if focused on a specific method, it should present insights or approaches that could be applied to other products or interventions.
- Relevant for more than one country—if focused on specific countries, it should present insights or approaches that could be applied in other countries.