Onikepe Owolabi
Senior global technical director for family planning and maternal, newborn, and child health
We are committed to helping countries provide the family planning and reproductive health services their communities need. And we know that health workers are one of the keys to making this happen.
From helping couples space or limit pregnancies to helping adolescents plan their futures, health workers have the power to provide a full range of services for clients at any stage of their reproductive lives. Right now, there are more than 218 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy, but aren’t using effective methods of contraception to prevent it. Together, we we’re working to change that.
Key Results
1,181,826 new contraceptive users in 2020
204,480 unintended pregnancies averted due to contraceptives in 2020 (estimated)
234 maternal deaths avoided due to contraceptives in 2020 (estimated)
Our key approaches:
- Expanding the roles of health workers to deliver appropriate family planning services, supported by policy changes as necessary.
- Increasing the range of available family planning methods at all levels of the health system.
- Strengthening the planning, information, education, management, and supply-chain systems.
- Enabling health workers to integrate family planning with other services such as for immunization, postabortion care, obstetric fistula, and HIV.
- Improving the performance of health workers, organizations, and systems by applying IntraHealth’s Performance Improvement and Optimizing Performance and Quality tools.
- Developing innovative approaches to education and training, including eHealth and mHealth applications.
- Enhancing community-based distribution and referral systems between health workers at different levels of care, including promoting use of technology for improved communication.
- Expanding access for young people through policy reform, youth-friendly services, and empowering youth as advocates and ambassadors
- Engaging and educating communities and leaders through advocacy, public campaigns, social media, and open dialogues.
Selected Achievements
Reduced contraceptive stockout rates to as low as 2% in Senegal using our Informed Push Model for supply chain management.
Improved the quality of preservice family planning education for nurses and midwives in Tanzania and Uganda
Increased family planning knowledge in policymakers and trainers by 40% after workshops on the Training Resource Package in Tanzania and Uganda
Provided family planning services for 72,600+ people in South Sudan.
Supported eight health districts in Burkina Faso and Senegal in implementing a strategy of systematic referral for family planning services in its role as TCI accelerator hub
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