Are the HIP products being used to enhance programming?
There is substantial evidence that various HIP products are used for decision-making purposes and informing policy, strategy, and practice.
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Is there evidence of increased implementation of high-impact practices related to HIP products?
If HIP products are not being used, why not?
Are they a global good available on a worldwide basis?
What does their use look like?
What could we do to make them better and improve their utility?
HIP product users represent multiple agencies and organizations, including:
- government
- donor agency
- professional association
- nonprofit organization
Their job functions commonly included:
- policy makers
- technical advisors
- program officers
- network coordinators
Collectively, HIP product users—about 75 percent of participants—read and use a wide variety of HIP products.
Service delivery briefs are accessed more often compared to other HIP products.
Many users either share HIP products
or knowledge gained with their counterparts, stakeholders, and partners to ensure that HIPs are integrated into family planning programs.
While users are satisfied with HIP products overall, they think the utility to key stakeholders can be strengthened further and have many useful suggestions.
There is a sense that there are still other family planning professionals who may not currently have access to HIP products but can be greatly benefited by HIP products.
Users recognize the importance of reaching audiences who are providing family planning services on the ground—including health officers, service providers, community health workers, and midwives—with HIP products presented in other easy-to-disseminate formats, such as developing social media graphics.
Some users think it is critical to reflect the voice of those community-level audiences from the initial stage of HIP product development to increase relevance and usefulness.
Users generally agree that HIP products support the implementation of HIPs by presenting evidence-based information and programmatic guidance in a user-friendly format.
Evidence suggests HIP products contribute to the enhanced use of HIPs.
However, such an effect of HIP products in overall family planning achievements may be recognized as just contributory because the data, information, and knowledge gained from HIP products play small parts in the entire resources and tools supporting family planning efforts.
To further examine the evidence of increased implementation of HIPs and direct contributions made by HIP products, a follow-up study with a more rigorous design may be considered.
A small segment of users is not using HIP products specifically for programming, even though they think of HIP products as valuable and relevant resources.
Those users tend to read HIP products to keep their knowledge up to date with the latest evidence.
These users are already very familiar with the information covered by HIP products or working in a country where most HIPs have been tested and well integrated in the national family planning program.
Therefore, to them, the information can be too basic or general to address a specific context of the country.
They see professionals relatively new to the field or working in countries looking to strengthen their current family planning effort by incorporating HIPs as the primary audience for these products.
The majority of non-users have seen or heard of HIP products.
Two people said they had not known about the products before the interview. They typically relied on the country-specific research reports and policy briefs as their primary information sources.
The results indicate that HIP product users consider them a global good that can be easily accessed, understood, and used by family planning professionals across different countries.
Global-level users highly support the collective effort to update existing products and identify other HIPs to publish new products.
They often serve the role of knowledge broker to country-level users by sharing the latest news about the HIP products and incorporating HIP products into guidelines and training materials targeting country-level users.
A small portion of users may still have some issues considering HIP products as truly a global good.
For users in Latin America, it is the challenges associated with language because HIP products, developed in English and then translated into other languages, may not adequately address the region's unique family planning and reproductive health context.