Reach Every Household with Family Planning: Door-to-Door Mini-Campaigns to Promote Contraceptive Methods
Reach Every Household with Family Planning: Door-to-Door Mini-Campaigns to Promote Contraceptive Methods
The DRC National Strategic Plan 2014-2020 outlines a multi-sectoral vision that aims to increase the modern contraceptive prevalence to 19% and provide access to and use of modern contraceptive methods to at least 2.1 million women by 2020. To rapidly increase access to and information about FP services, the Ministry of Health (MOH) introduced an approach that engages at least three community-based distributors (CBDs) of FP methods per health area. Even in health areas with at least three CBDs, with an average of only one CBD per 700 women of reproductive age, coverage is low. Despite the potential for CBDs to improve access to FP, the limited numbers of CBDs per population, coupled with their low motivation, prevent the full potential of this approach from being achieved. Given the large unmet need and low contraceptive use, the USAID-funded Integrated Health Project Plus (IHPplus) sought to identify innovative means to reach more households with FP services. IHPplus thus adapted DRC’s field-tested approach to vaccination campaigns to FP. Three-day mini-campaigns were designed to mobilize communities around FP, provide door-to-door services for FP, and link women and men to CBDs while supporting and motivating the CBDs. The strategy was also aimed at enabling CBDs to talk with couples and engage men in counseling and awareness sessions.