International Conference on Family Planning 2016

The International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP), held in Nusa Dua, Indonesia from Jan. 25-28, 2016, drew more than 3,000 people to share best practices, celebrate successes, and chart a course forward on family planning.

“The conference featured a lot of discussion about aligning family planning and reproductive health with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals,” said Diana Silimperi, division vice president for International Health at Abt Associates. Many attendees also focused on how to engage women and girls to use contraceptives, she said.

Abt Associates’ staff gave several presentations and moderated discussions at ICFP, as well as maintaining two booths, including one for the recently-concluded Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Project, which is transitioning to the SHOPS Plus project.

Abt presentations focused on tracking family planning spending and the relationship between postpartum/post-miscarriage counseling and use of family planning services in Jordan. Also, staff from the Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) project delivered a number of presentations. 

Samantha Lint, an Abt associate analyst for International Health, moderated a discussion on January 27 on leveraging community resources to meet demand. Lint was one of two Americans and 38 people around the world between the ages of 18 and 25 to be selected as youth moderators at the conference. 

Lint said a number of the interventions discussed during the session she moderated focused on retraining community health workers to do new things, such as advising women on how to use family planning methods. Lint also said that there was a lot of frank talk at the conference about how we are going to meet the FP2020 goal of enabling 120 million more women and girls to use contraceptives by 2020.