Partnerships for Policy Development: A Case Study From Uganda's Costed Implementation Plan for Family Planning.

In global health, partnerships between practitioners and policy makers facilitate stakeholders in jointly addressing those issues that require multiple perspectives for developing, implementing, and evaluating plans, strategies, and programs. For family planning, costed implementation plans (CIPs) are developed through a strategic government-led consultative process that results in a detailed plan for program activities and an estimate of the funding required to achieve an established set of goals. Since 2009, many countries have developed CIPs.

Is Household Wealth Associated With Use of Long-Acting Reversible and Permanent Methods of Contraception? A Multi-Country Analysis.

As programs continue to expand access to family planning information, services, and products, it is critical that these efforts be undertaken with an equity lens, ensuring that regardless of socioeconomic status, all women and couples can use the method that meets their needs. This study explores the relationship between household wealth and the use of long-acting and permanent methods (LAPMs) versus short-acting methods of contraception among modern method users, using multivariate analyses based on Demographic Health Survey data from 30 developing countries conducted between 2006 and 2013. Overall, and controlling for relevant individual and household characteristics including age, number of living children, education, and urban/rural residence, we found that wealthier women were more likely than poorer women to use LAPMs instead of short-acting methods: 20 of the 30 countries showed a positive and statistically significant association between wealth and LAPM use.

Regional trends in the use of short-acting and long-acting contraception accessed through the private and public sectors.

Objective: To examine trends in the source of modern contraception (public versus private sector); method choice (long-acting or permanent methods versus short-acting methods); and method and source combined.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted using data collected by national Demographic and Health Surveys and Reproductive Health Surveys during the period 1992-2012. The dataset included 18 low-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, 10 from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and 8 from Asia.

Continued use of the Standard Days Method.

Objective: To examine the long-term effectiveness and continuation of the Standard Days Method (SDM)®, a fertility awareness-based method of family planning that identifies Days 8-19 (inclusive) of the cycle as the fertile window. On these days users avoid unprotected sexual intercourse to prevent pregnancy. The method works best for women with cycles that are usually in the range of 26-32 days, which is an important reason for method discontinuation in the first year of use.

Reconsidering childhood undernutrition: can birth spacing make a difference? An analysis of the 2002-2003 El Salvador National Family Health Survey.

It is well understood that undernutrition underpins much of child morbidity and mortality in less developed countries, but the causes of undernutrition are complex and interrelated, requiring a multipronged approach for intervention. This paper uses a subsample of 3853 children under age 5 from the most recent family health survey in El Salvador to examine the relationship between birth spacing and childhood undernutrition (stunting and underweight). While recent research and guidance suggest that birth spacing of three to five years contributes to lower levels of infant and childhood mortality, little attention has been given to the possibility that short birth intervals have longer-term effects on childhood nutrition status.

Being strategic about contraceptive introduction: the experience of the Standard Days Method.

Background: Many national and institutional family planning policies explicitly include fertility awareness-based methods among the method options that should be made available, but these methods are often not offered for a variety of reasons. After testing the efficacy of the Standard Days Method (SDM), which is a fertility awareness-based method that identifies Days 8-19 of the menstrual cycle as fertile for women with cycles lasting between 26 and 32 days, pilot studies were conducted to introduce it into programs.

Study Design: Through 14 pilot studies around the world, ministries of health, family planning associations and community development organizations introduced the SDM.

Cultivating men's interest in family planning in rural El Salvador.

A pilot project in rural El Salvador tested the integration of family planning into a water and sanitation program as a strategy for increasing male involvement in family planning decison making and use. The organizations involved posited that integrating family planning into a resource management and community development project would facilitate male involvement by diffusing information, by referring men and women to services, and by expanding method choice to include the new Standard Days Method through networks established around issues men cared about and were already involved in. This article examines data from a community-based household survey to assess the impact of the intervention and finds significant changes in contraceptive knowledge, attitudes, and behavior from baseline to endline.

Creating options in family planning for the private sector in Latin America.

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are facing the gradual phase-out of international-donor support of contraceptive commodities and technical and management assistance, as well as an increased reliance on limited public sector resources and a limited private sector role in providing contraceptives to the public. Therefore, those nations must develop multisectoral strategies to achieve contraceptive security. The countries need to consider information about the market for family planning commodities and services in order to define and promote complementary roles for the public sector, the commercial sector, and the nongovernmental-organization sector, as well as to better identify which segments of the population each of those sectors should serve.

Mind the gap: responding to the global funding crisis in family planning.

The widening gap between the cost of meeting family planning needs and the funding available for commodities and programmes is a concern among policymakers and reproductive health professionals. The gap could reach US dollars 210 million by 2015. Its causes are clear; its solutions are not.

Untreated gonococcal and chlamydial infection in a probability sample of adults.

Context: The prevalence and distribution of gonococcal and chlamydial infections in the general population are poorly understood. Development of nucleic acid amplification tests, such as the ligase chain reaction assay, provides new opportunities to estimate the prevalence of untreated infections in the population.

Objective: To estimate the overall prevalence of untreated gonococcal and chlamydial infections and to describe patterns of infection within specific demographic subgroups of the young adult population in Baltimore, Md.

Interview Mode and Measurement of Sexual Behaviors: Methodological Issues.

Studies of sexual and other sensitive behaviors are often fraught with a variety of reporting biases. When IAQs are used to collect data, respondents may underreport certain sensitive behaviors and overreport normative behaviors. SAQs can also pose problems: requiring that respondents be literate and able to follow skip patterns.

Measuring AIDS-Related Behaviors in Older Populations: Methodological Issues.

Because of a dearth of research on reporting biases in the measurement of HIV-related sexual and drug use behaviors in older populations, it is frequently assumed that methodological findings of research conducted with younger populations will generalize to older respondents. In this study, estimates of the effect of the experimental manipulation of interview mode (interviewer administered vs. self-administered) were derived separately for three age strata: 12 to 49, 50 to 64, and 65+.

Automating Telephone Surveys: Using T-ACASI to Obtain Data on Sensitive Topics.

This paper describes a new interview data collection system that uses a personal computer equipped with a telephone interface card. This system, telephone audio computer-assisted self-interviewing or T-ACASI, offers the economy of telephone interviews while providing the privacy of self-administered questionnaires. We describe T-ACASI design considerations and operational characteristics.