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Advancing Family Planning
Today, an estimated 215 million women worldwide want to avoid pregnancy and plan their families but are not using modern contraception. Family planning does more than help women and couples limit the size of their families: It safeguards individual health and rights, preserves natural resources, and can improve the economic outlook for families and communities. Family planning also saves lives—up to one-third of all maternal deaths and illnesses could be prevented if women had access to contraception.
The need for quality family planning services is all the more urgent today because more than 1 billion young people ages 15 to 24 are entering their reproductive years, guaranteeing an enormous surge in population growth through 2050. Eighty percent of these young people live in the developing world.
EngenderHealth in Action
Across the globe, EngenderHealth
has proven that even in resource-poor settings, family planning services
can be safe, effective, and affordable. EngenderHealth partners with
governments, national health systems, community organizations,
policymakers, and health care providers to:
- Improve the safety, efficacy, and quality of family planning services
- Expand contraceptive options for clients
- Ensure that clients are making informed choices
- Build upon strong family planning services by adding additional reproductive health services needed by clients, such as HIV and AIDS services, and antenatal and obstetric care
- Ensure continuing financial and social investment in family planning
One of EngenderHealth’s key accomplishments in family planning is bringing new contraceptive technologies to low-resource areas, specifically ensuring that long-acting and permanent contraceptive methods are included in the range of options available to clients. Long-acting and permanent methods such as intrauterine devices (IUDs), implants, female sterilization, and vasectomy are safe, convenient, and cost-effective—yet, they are highly underutilized and are the most difficult to obtain.
