When Everything Must Go Right So Nothing Goes Wrong

By Pamela Barnes, President & CEO, EngenderHealth

In global health, nobody has an easy job, but ensuring voluntary and safe permanent contraception is among the toughest. Everything has to go right so that nothing goes wrong.

The latest disturbing news coming from Chhattisgarh, India, reminds us that despite being 20 years post-ICPD, we global health professionals have more to do to ensure reproductive rights, choice, and quality of care. And as the story goes—as it has too many times before—the devastating consequences are borne by mostly poor, rural women. It’s unconscionable.

Although the Chhattisgarh situation is under investigation by the Government of India, we know that quality of care was compromised at all levels. This includes the conditions under which the surgical sterilizations were performed, the high number of surgeries in a given period, the questionable quality of the medications, the implicit targets set by local authorities, and financial incentives. In many ways, there isn’t a simple answer to what happened–there were a series of systemic, programmatic and clinical failures. Many organizations, including EngenderHealth, have called for a greater need to ensure and protect human rights, reproductive rights and clients’ rights; and to address informed and voluntary decision making, counseling, client safety and service quality.

But how does this translate into action? What must go right so that nothing goes wrong?

EngenderHealth’s commitment to getting everything right, beginning with our work in voluntary permanent methods decades ago, has led to the development of standards used throughout the field for informed consent, clinical safety, infection prevention, and other aspects of quality service delivery. These have also been applied to broader family planning and reproductive health issues. What we’ve learned is that investments must take place at all levels – beginning with a fundamental recognition that individuals have a basic right to full and appropriate information about their reproductive health choices and that they are able to make decisions without coercion, pressure, or inducements. For EngenderHealth, it’s about achieving a vision of client-centered care and all that is meant by this term.

For example, in India it would mean expanding the contraceptive method mix in the public sector, ensuring quality, and working to advocate for a focus to be on client’s choices rather than achieving targets. Right now, it’s mostly sterilization services, intrauterine devices (IUDs), condoms and pills—a situation which limits choice for women and others, including unmarried adolescents. We also see a greater need for training so that service providers are equipped with skills to provide voluntary, safe and quality services and can monitor quality, rights and choice for continuous quality improvement. These are examples of the kinds of concrete actions that must be undertaken as part of a broader comprehensive strategy rooted in a rights-based approach.

The incident in Chhattisgarh is a sobering reminder of what can happen when family planning services are not designed, implemented, or monitored in a way that protects and fulfills individual’s human rights. We urge the Ministry of Health and state governments to take decisive action to develop practical approaches for infusing a rights-based approach, with quality of care as one of the top priorities and with women’s needs, desires, and preferences at the center. To do otherwise would simply maintain the status quo.

—–

EngenderHealth and its partners have developed two new publications to assist diverse audiences, including donors, policymakers, program planners and managers, service providers, rights advocates, and community members, in their efforts to achieve rights-based family planning programs.

The first publication is the Voluntary Rights-based Family Planning Conceptual Framework User’s Guide, a practical resource to help stakeholders design, implement, and monitor family planning programs that respect, protect, and fulfill human rights. Coauthored with the Futures Group, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the guide is a companion to the recent publication of Voluntary Family Planning Programs that Respect, Protect, and Fulfill Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework, which took long-standing family planning concepts, such as quality of care, voluntarism, and service access and linked them with human rights principles, such as empowerment, equity, nondiscrimination, and accountability. The Framework provides a holistic vision of what a rights-based family planning program looks like; the User’s Guide provides a pathway to applying the framework in actual practice.

EngenderHealth also developed Checkpoints for Choice: An Orientation and Resource Package, which takes a closer look at the concept of voluntarism—one component of a rights-based approach—and helps stakeholders understand the clients’ experience and their ability to make full, free, and informed choices about family planning. The tool, developed with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development, consists of a detailed plan with all support materials for a one-day workshop to enable family planning program planners and managers to strengthen the focus of family planning programs on clients’ ability to make full, free, and informed contraceptive choices in the context of a rights-based program. In addition to the workshop guidance and materials, the package includes links to recommended references, tools, and additional reading.

Uganda Prioritizes Voluntary Family Planning and Charts Course for a Rights-Based Approach

Blog post by Jan Kumar, EngenderHealth/RESPOND Project

The planets have aligned in Uganda over the past few weeks for a significant shift in the country’s national family planning (FP) program that sets it on a new and ground-breaking course. From July 28-30, 2014, the Ugandan Ministry of Health (MOH)—with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—hosted an event titled “Accelerating social and economic transformation through universal access to voluntary family planning.” President Museveni used this opportunity to accelerate the government’s commitment to FP2020 and to voice his endorsement for FP as a means to improve maternal health, reduce poverty, and support social and economic development. The meeting paved the way for the promotion of equitable access to a wide range of quality FP services that ensure full, free, and informed choice, as well as the protection and fulfillment of human rights for all Ugandan women and couples who wish to space or limit their childbearing.

DSC_1557

Continue reading

Missing Links: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the Post-2015 Global Development Agenda

On July 17, Katja Iversen, CEO of Women Deliver, published “Working Hard to Get the World We Want: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights After 2015” on The Huffington Post’s Global Motherhood blog. In this post, Iversen reports on the work of the Open Working Group (OWG) for Sustainable Development Goals, which is comprised of representatives from 70 countries and tasked with the creation of a new global framework for development that they are set to present to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon by the end of July. The influence of this report on the future of international development, sustainability, and human rights cannot be overstated.

The goals and targets it proposes—and the issues explicitly addressed—will be of utmost importance in the shaping of the post-2015 development agenda. Due to conservative push-back, Iversen decries, the current report language fails to include sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), as well as the health of young people despite the fact that “the majority of governments have identified [SRHR] as a priority to get the world on a sustainable path.”

The blog post discusses the vital role that voluntary family planning and ensuring rights and contraceptive choices for women and girls play in ensuring equal opportunity, economic growth, and the development and maintenance of healthy populations. Iversen urges readers to take action and suggests ways to become involved in supporting the push for inclusion of SRHR in the forthcoming global development framework. Read this important post and join EngenderHealth, Women Deliver, and other organizations and individuals in the effort to make SRHR a priority in the post-2015 global development agenda and a reality for all.

The Road to Implementation: A User’s Guide for Applying a Rights-Based Approach to Family Planning Programs

Guest post by Mariela Rodriguez, Research Associate, Futures Group

Human rights. Contraceptive choice. Access. Information. Empowerment. What do all of these things mean? How do they relate to family planning (FP)? Since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning and the movement it initiated, FP2020, the topic of human rights and empowerment in FP has risen on the international development agenda. We know that the Summit “underscored the importance of access to contraceptives as both a right and a transformational health and development priority.”[i] But what does this mean in practice? How can FP programs turn rhetoric about rights into a reality?

The recently published Voluntary Family Planning Programs that Respect, Protect and Fulfill Human Rights: a Conceptual Framework Users’ Guide is intended for use in conjunction with the Voluntary Family Planning Programs that Respect, Protect, and Fulfill Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework, published in 2013 by Futures Group and EngenderHealth with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.[ii] The User’s Guide is intended for use by a wide audience spanning policymakers, program managers, health providers, rights advocates, civil society organizations, donors, technical assistance agencies, implementing organizations, and researchers. The document contains three modules to orient stakeholders to the framework and to guide the processes for using it to assess, plan or strengthen, monitor, and evaluate FP programs through a human rights lens.

Continue reading

MCHIP and PSI Promote Postpartum IUD to Expand Access to Family Planning for More Women

Guest post by Holly Blanchard, Senior Reproductive Health/Family Planning Advisor, Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP)

Access to a wide range of safe and effective contraceptive options is every woman’s human right, including those who have just given birth. Access to family planning (FP) not only enables a woman to achieve her and her partner’s desired family size, but also contributes to improved health outcomes for both women and children. However, in many low resource settings, postpartum women are offered a limited range of FP methods, if they are counseled on postpartum FP (PPFP) at all. With increasing numbers of women delivering in health facilities, the opportunity to offer the option of immediate postpartum intrauterine device (PPIUD) services should be maximized.

Participants gather for a demonstration of PPIUD insertion using anatomic models at a West Africa regional postpartum family planning workshop in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso this past February. Photo credit: Jhpiego

Participants at the PPIUD meeting in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso gather for a demonstration of method insertion using anatomic models. Photo credit: Anne Pfitzer

Continue reading

Meeting the Reproductive Needs and Rights of Women and Girls: The Legacy of ICPD is in the Details

Guest post by Mary Beth Hastings, Vice President of Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)

The task of translating the International Conference on Population and Development’s (ICPD) Programme of Action (PoA) into meaningful change for women and girls globally includes some important detail work. Several years ago, my organization – the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) – set out to better define the meaning of key PoA terms. Our guiding question was: “What constitutes comprehensive, rights-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care?” We found some useful literature and human rights documents to point us in the right direction, but most importantly, we wanted to make sure our answer was grounded in the lived experiences of women and girls.

Field research in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. Photo by M.B. Hastings/CHANGE

Community-based health workers in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia met with CHANGE to share their comprehensive approach to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Photo by S. Sippel/CHANGE

Continue reading

Getting Real on Rights: Experience from Two Country Consultations on Applying a Rights-Based Approach to Family Planning Programming

Guest post by Shannon Harris

Given the many challenges that countries face in providing family planning (FP) services, how can a client-centered, rights-based approach to programming help governments meet their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill clients’ rights to meet their reproductive needs and desires? This question framed two recent country consultations in India and Kenya to explore the feasibility and desirability of applying the voluntary, rights-based FP (VRBFP) conceptual framework. Were country-level FP stakeholders—program managers, policymakers, and providers—even interested in such an approach?

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Futures Group and EngenderHealth partnered with the Population Foundation of India and the National Council for Population and Development in Kenya to host national and regional stakeholder consultations, as well as conduct FP site visits to explore these questions. Despite diverse cultural, policy and program environments, stakeholders in both countries expressed tremendous interest in using a rights-based approach. Stakeholders found the program vision described in the VRBFP framework appealing and relevant to their programs because of its emphasis on the individuals and communities served by the FP program, while simultaneously acknowledging the importance of the policy environment and supply-side factors.

Photo by H. Connor/EngenderHealth

Members of the Futures Group/EngenderHealth rights framework team visit a community motivator in India’s Bihar State to identify the realities and challenges related to protecting and fulfilling human rights in FP at the community level—specifically to identify the conditions and practices that either uphold or violate human rights. (Photo by H. Connor/EngenderHealth)

Continue reading

Family Planning for All: The Importance of Contraceptive Access and Choice following Fistula Repair

Guest Post by Carrie Ngongo (Project Manager, Fistula Care Plus)

People often assume that women who’ve undergone an obstetric fistula repair are not interested in using family planning (FP). After all, most lost a baby during the obstructed labor that led to their injury. However, recent studies (see here and here) indicate that fistula clients are often interested in using FP if they learn about available methods and services during their post-repair recovery period. When fistula surgeons and counselors make assumptions about women’s desires, they miss the opportunity to provide needed services and to offer reproductive choices to women who may have been disadvantaged and marginalized as a result of their injury.

Photo by R. Raj Kumar/EngenderHealth

Photo by R. Raj Kumar/EngenderHealth

Continue reading

Ensuring Human Rights–Based Goals in the Post-2015 Development Agenda

PictyureThis week, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) published Substantive Equality and Reproductive Rights: A Briefing Paper on Aligning Development Goals with Human Rights Obligations, a new resource offering guidance on how governments can ensure that principles of substantive equality, including human rights principles and obligations, are reflected in the post-2015 development agenda.

Substantive equality calls for states to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights, ensure equality for all, and promote accountability for rights violations. The paper contends that violations of reproductive rights are primarily manifestations of discrimination, poverty, and violence. Therefore, where women’s rights to equality and nondiscrimination are not fulfilled, their ability to access reproductive health services and make meaningful choices about their reproductive lives is limited.

Continue reading

Keeping Complexity in a Human Rights–Based Approach to Family Planning: Is It Worth It?

Submitted by Shannon Harris, on behalf of the team led by Futures Group and EngenderHealth that developed the Voluntary, Rights-Based Family Planning Framework

Human rights–based family planning (FP) programming—what does it mean? Where do you start to translate it into practice? How comprehensive do you need to be? It is easy to become daunted by a long list of inputs and activities, such as those listed in the voluntary, rights-based family planning framework developed by a team led by Futures Group and EngenderHealth. The recent 2020 Vision newsletter refers to the overwhelming nature of existing guidance documents for ensuring that FP programs are rights-based and offers a simplified starting point. But will simplification of a complex set of challenges lead to the transformation in FP programming that our field needs?

We welcome the dialogue started by Population Action International (PAI) about how to move forward to protect and fulfill human rights within FP programs. This conversation is needed; multiple voices and views add richness to the discussion. PAI suggests starting with three priorities: voluntarism, informed choice, and achieving a diverse method mix. Certainly, we have to start somewhere, and these three elements are essential to rights-based FP— programs must be vigilant in preventing instances of coercion and in ensuring full, free, and informed contraceptive choice.

However, these program elements are not sufficient to ensure equitable access to services for all nor to ensure that the services are of high quality. They also do not address community factors that impede access to and use of FP. And they do not address the issue of accountability. These are critical considerations for reaching and fulfilling the human rights of the 220 million women with an unmet need for FP.

Continue reading