Parkers Mobile Clinic (PMC360) is a Nigerian non-profit organization. It brings integrated health care services, including reproductive health services, to the doorsteps of people in rural and remote areas. In this interview, Dr. Charles Umeh, the founder of Parkers Mobile Clinic, highlights the organization’s focus—tackling health inequality and overpopulation to improve population, health, and environmental outcomes.
In July 2021, USAID’s Research for Scalable Solutions (R4S) project, led by FHI 360, released the Drug Shop Operators' Provision of Injectable Contraception manual. The handbook shows how drug shop operators can coordinate with the public health system to safely provide an expanded method mix that includes injectables, as well as training for clients on self-injection. The handbook was developed in Uganda in partnership with the National Drug Shop Task Team but can be adapted to various contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Knowledge SUCCESS’ contibuting writer Brian Mutebi talked to Fredrick Mubiru, Family Planning Technical Advisor at FHI 360 and one of the key resource persons involved in the development of the handbook, about its significance and why people should use it.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a relatively new approach towards transforming Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) outcomes for youth and adolescents. But what does "quality" look like when applying Human-Centered Design (HCD) to Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (ASRH) programming?
This article summarizes important findings from several Global Health: Science and Practice Journal articles that report on contraceptive method discontinuation and issues related to quality of care and counseling.
Key populations, including female sex workers, face barriers to health care access that include stigma, criminalization, and gender-based violence. In many cases, these barriers can be mitigated by peer educators, who bring valuable insight and may engender trust with clients.
A major barrier to young people’s access and use of family planning is mistrust. This new tool leads providers and young potential clients through a process that addresses this barrier by fostering empathy, creating opportunities to improve youth family planning service delivery.
FHI 360’s Catherine Packer shares a personal perspective on DMPA-SC’s past ten years, from early research to recent workshops. Since its introduction—and particularly since it became available for self-injection—DMPA-SC has become an important part of the global family planning and reproductive health landscape.
Evidence to Action (E2A) has been reaching young first-time parents Burkina Faso, Tanzania, and Nigeria in recent years for strengthening family planning and reproductive health service delivery for girls, women, and underserved communities.
Providing women with containers for DMPA-subcutaneous (DMPA-SC) storage and sharps can help to encourage safe self-injection practices at home. Improper disposal in pit latrines or open spaces remains an implementation challenge to safely scaling this popular and highly effective method. With training from health providers and a provided puncture-proof container, self-injection clients enrolled in a pilot study in Ghana were able to appropriately store and dispose of DMPA-SC injectable contraceptives, offering lessons for scale-up.
There is increasing consensus that adolescent-friendly health services—as currently implemented—are not consistently scalable nor sustainable. In an adolescent-responsive system, each building block of the health system—including public and private sectors and communities—respond to adolescent health needs.