That One Thing

Do you follow the High Impact Practices (HIPs) for Family Planning? The HIPs are evidence-based family planning practices vetted by experts against specific criteria and documented in an easy-to-use format. HIPs help programs focus resources for greatest impact through their products that include briefs, webinars, papers, and planning guides. This week, Knowledge SUCCESS wants to share the HIPs latest quarterly newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on the most recent family planning evidence.

The most recent HIPs newsletter announces the newest addition to the HIP briefs collection: Digital Health for FP Providers. Of the six building blocks of health systems identified by the WHO, this brief focuses on the first, service delivery, specifically on the ways that digital health can support service providers to deliver quality contraceptive services. The brief is currently only available in English, but translations in Spanish, French, and Portuguese will soon be available. The newsletter also shared that the Supply Chain Management and Vouchers briefs are now available in those three languages.

Along with updates on HIP briefs, the newsletter regularly shares full recordings of recent HIP webinars and other timely products like papers and planning guides. Subscribe to the newsletter so that you can stay in the know with this valuable resource.

This week, Knowledge SUCCESS is launching The Pitch, a global competition to find and fund four innovators who will implement game-changing ideas in knowledge management for FP/RH programs. This is one of the Knowledge Solutions that emerged from four regional workshops. 

For The Pitch, organizations in USAID family planning priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are invited to submit an application with their ideas for knowledge management innovations. Four Knowledge Management Innovators–two from each region–will be awarded up to USD $50,000 to implement their innovation in knowledge management with support from Knowledge SUCCESS. 

Do you work in FP/RH in Sub-Saharan Africa or Asia?  Do you have an idea for an innovation that could make it easier for FP/RH professionals to find and share information, collaborate with one another, or use shared experience to improve FP/RH programs?

If so, we invite you to: 

• Review the guidance and eligibility requirements.
• Register to attend The Pitch Kickoff Event on January 14th. 
• Submit your innovation in knowledge management by February 4th.

Up to 5 semi-finalists per region will be selected to pitch their idea to a panel of judges representing the FP/RH donor community in two regionally broadcasted events. 

Questions or concerns about The Pitch?

Tune into our exciting kickoff event on January 14 as we review guidelines, provide tips on pitching, and facilitate Q&A!

As you may have heard, the International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) is being held virtually this year, making it more accessible and open for greater attendance across the globe. This week, we want to remind you of the online registration.

This two-day virtual event will feature sessions by community leaders and sector experts discussing the latest research and programmatic learnings in FP/RH, while sharing solutions for addressing emerging challenges.

Register for the event and check out the Social Media Engagement Kit, so you can share the event with your network. Various sample posts under the main #NotWithoutFP and #ICP2020 forum hashtags and with different graphics provide you an easy way to help bring more attention to this online event and encourage others to register.

Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) has been looking back at the wins gained from its family planning partnership. In celebration, they have launched the #MyFPStory social media campaign, a collection of FP2020 civil society partners telling stories about how the partnership has helped to improve contraceptive access in their respective countries or regions.

This week, we’d like to highlight the videos shared through the #MyFPStory campaign so far. Many have shared lessons learned, best practices, as well as recommendations for the FP2020 partnership beyond 2020. And FP2020 is still looking for more stories from all partners – family planning leaders, focal points, and advocates!

View all the videos highlighting the incredible work of FP2020 civil society partners.

Will you join the #MyFPStory campaign? Here’s how:

• Answer the question: How has the Family Planning 2020 partnership advanced your work? How are you increasing access to family planning for others?
• Follow the instructions in this video guidance note and use this social media toolkit for more resources. Be sure to upload your video in this google folder
• Make sure to follow and tag @FP2020Global on Twitter and @Familyplanning2020 on Facebook and Instagram. Your video may be retweeted/reshared on the FP2020 social media pages. In addition, it could be featured as part of the family planning story compilation at the launch event in January.

As a part of the FP/RH community, you know that we are constantly developing innovative and essential tools and resources that have a wide application to many different programs and contexts. At Knowledge SUCCESS, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we compiled a variety of these tools into a handy guide, and modeled it like a holiday gift guide we often see around this time of year?

This week, we would like to introduce the Must-Have Family Planning Resource Guide, a collection of tools and resources produced and shared in the family planning and reproductive health community this past year.

Our Must-Have Family Planning Resource Guide to end 2020 includes an array of tools, resources, blogs, or reports that we received by asking projects funded by USAID Population and Reproductive Health to submit resources that they have developed or used. The guide is categorized by five thematic areas:

1. Program design, advisory, or planning
2. Youth engagement in voluntary family planning
3. Gender integration
4. Expanding voluntary family planning choices and method mix
5. Social and behavior change communication in family planning

We’d like to extend a warm Thank You to all our partners who submitted resources for this guide. We hope this family planning resource guide helps you to see what new tools or resources were developed this year, and how they can be applied to your work.

Young first-time mothers have a higher risk of poor pregnancy, delivery, and child health outcomes, which are compounded by multiple factors that limit their access to timely health information and services. To help first-time parents achieve better health and gender outcomes, family planning and reproductive health programs should design interventions that are tailored to address the many health needs and related social and gender issues that affect first-time parents.

This week, we feature a resource by the Evidence to Action Project that shares valuable insights and experience–both the “how to” and the “how not to”– gleaned from implementing programs for first-time parents in 3 countries in Africa.

Evidence to Action (E2A) shares eight insights garnered from its experience designing and implementing programming for first-time parents (FTPs), highlighting the most important lessons learned across its projects. Each insight provides background on the issues involved, including the specific challenges or opportunities that are unique to FTPs and key points to consider when designing and implementing FTP programs. They also share activity cards and guidance for working with first-time mothers, their male partners, and their older women relatives. A French translation will be available soon!

It’s no secret that our field is full of excellent resources designed to help programmers achieve the best possible results. However, we don’t always consider how different tools can complement one another.

This week, we invite you to join the IBP Network’s webinar on their new tool that demonstrates how WHO guidelines and High Impact Practices in Family Planning (HIPs) can enhance each other. WHO develops evidence-based guidance and tools to inform and support high-quality family planning programs; HIPs are promising and proven approaches to strengthen voluntary family planning programs. Both are important resources for program planners and implementers but are not always used optimally. Let’s get them together!

Join the IBP network for a webinar introducing a new matrix designed to help facilitate use of WHO Guidelines and High Impact Practices (HIPs) in Family Planning! The tool allows users to identify which WHO Guidelines can help strengthen implementation of selected service delivery HIPs, organized by four categories: Advocacy, Program Design, Provider Reference, and Training. Concrete examples provide insights into how the tool can be used.

Register now: Wednesday, December 2, 2020; 8:00-9:00am EST

COVID-19 has highlighted and emphasized many aspects in our daily life, including our adaptability as humans, as well as the monumental gaps that still require attention. The COVID-19 pandemic has been identified as particularly harsh for gender equality and advancing women’s rights and empowerment.

Since the Beijing Platform for Action, the United Nations has published trends and statistics on gender equality every five years. Today we bring to you the World’s Women 2020, which takes stock of the progress in advancing women’s rights, empowering women and girls, and ensuring gender equality in the world community.

This collection of 100 data stories provides up-to-date assessments of progress towards gender equality in the following six critical areas, including, under each area, the impact of COVID-19 on women:

• population and families
• health
• education
• economic empowerment and asset ownership
• power and decision-making
• violence against women and girls

Individuals can search stories and data sets by topic area or by region.

Despite some progress in representation of women in different contexts, especially in East Africa, men lead much of the decision making in the voluntary family planning and reproductive health sector. COVID-19 has led to a rise in domestic violence, unplanned pregnancies, and restrictions to adequate health care services in East Africa.

Our pick this week focuses on the significance of gendered governance–the analysis of decision-making structures between men and women–in the provision of reproductive health care and voluntary family planning in the region.

Despite progress in the global representation of women in political, educational, and economic contexts, power dynamics still rule much of the voluntary family planning and reproductive health sector in East Africa.

Join the Knowledge SUCCESS East Africa team and Advocacy Accelerator for a lively discussion on:

• Power dynamics in the East Africa region that hinder access to FP/RH
• The intersection of the current governance landscape, gender equity, and the health sector impact on FP/RH care, and
• Policy measures that will improve gender parity and empower women to make voluntary FP/RH decisions.

This event is November 18 from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm East Africa time.

Contraceptive-induced menstrual changes can impact people’s lives in significant ways, and these changes are often the reason why people decide whether or not to use contraception and which contraceptive they choose. Understanding these impacts is essential to designing and implementing effective programs to meet the needs of women and girls, couples and families.

Our pick this week focuses on contraceptive-induced menstrual changes and features a collaborative format to engage participants in identifying research, programs, policies and product development priorities.

Hosted by FHI 360 through the Envision FP and Research for Scalable Solutions (R4S) projects with support from USAID, this meeting will bring together participants over the course of two days to review the evidence around contraceptive-induced menstrual changes. Participants will focus on user experiences and perspectives and collaboratively identify priorities for paths forward.

This event will take place on November 17 and 18 (for 2 hours on Day 1 and 2.5 hours on Day 2).

Research on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 has largely focused on the negative roles and vulnerabilities of men. But what about opportunities for positive change? How can health programs engage men and boys to address gender-related challenges in the context of the pandemic? Our pick this week is a virtual event hosted by gender experts that brought together participants working in global health to share experiences and learnings.

On September 22, 2020, the Interagency Gender Working Group’s Male Engagement Taskforce hosted an online forum that highlighted strategies to shift harmful masculinities to mitigate the pandemic’s effects within relationships, households, and communities.

The task force presented its framework for engaging men and boys to address gendered impacts of COVID-19, while program implementers shared results from their work in Zambia, Guatemala, and Uganda.

This post provides a brief event recap as well as links to video recordings of each presentation, Q&A sessions, break-out discussions, and presentation slides.

How can voluntary family planning programs harness the power of digital technology—from using telemedicine to access clients or improving health management information systems—to benefit individuals, providers, and program managers? Our pick this week is a compendium of rich case studies that explore how 30 countries around the world have implemented different digital technologies and share what’s worked and what hasn’t.

PACE’s new interactive Digital Health Compendium enables users to explore case studies across a range of digital health technologies used to enhance family planning programs, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in other regions of the world.

Case studies include a description of the digital health intervention, program context, and, if available, important findings and lessons learned. The compendium will be updated regularly with new case studies following calls for submissions.