The London Summit on Family Planning

Global health leaders, advocates, experts and practitioner gathered to increase awareness following this year's London Summit on Family Planning and to seek ways to carry forward the promises made during the event.

Today, at 12:30 pm, Management Sciences for Health, John Snow, Inc. (JSI), Pathfinder International, Ibis Reproductive Health, and the Women and Health Initiative of the Harvard School of Public Health, are hosting a post-election luncheon event: The London Summit on Family Planning: Where Do We Go from Here?

Follow the discussion on Twitter with #FPBoston and #FP2020.

The event includes:
12:00 pm Boxed Lunches and Networking
12:30 pm Welcome and Introduction of Keynote Speaker

• Joel Lamstein, President, John Snow, Inc.
• Dr. Jonathan Quick, President and CEO, Management Sciences for Health

12:40 pm Keynote Presentation

• David Canning, PhD, Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health

12:50 pm Panel Discussion

Cross-posted on the K4Health blog. K4Health is a USAID project, led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (JHU-CCP), with partners FHI-360 and Management Sciences for Health (MSH).

Worldwide 222 million women have an unmet need for modern contraceptives. That means of those women wanting to delay or prevent pregnancy, 222 million are not using contraceptives.

This number is burned into my brain: 222 million. Let’s put this in perspective.

Currently in the US, there are roughly 156 million women, so the number of women worldwide without access to contraceptives is greater than the entire population of women in the US.

On this historic World Population Day --- the first with the world’s population at seven billion and growing --- we call your attention to a crucial summit in London happening today, and to the ongoing importance of supporting access to family planning and sexual and reproductive health.

The London Summit

Over one hundred high-level decision-makers are convening at The London Summit on Family Planning in hopes of securing a better future for women and girls globally. Hosted by the UK government and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with UNFPA and others, the summit seeks to provide an additional 120 million women in resource-poor countries with lifesaving contraceptives, information and family planning services by 2020.