News Review – 15 December 2017

by admin · Published December 15, 2017 · Updated January 5, 2018

Capacity-building

A core principle of CIRHT’s work is increasing capacity for doctors, nurses, and midwives to provide compassionate, comprehensive family planning services to women and girls, including contraception and abortion care. The CIRHT focus is on academia – curricula enhancement, faculty development and research support at medical and nursing/midwifery schools – and we salute the many other organizations that work to support women and girls as well in other ways.

Examples from just this week: WHO and the Ouagadougou Partnership announced “momentum towards improved reproductive health services;” the UN’s Nigeria Humanitarian Fund will “boost the reproductive health care of at least 130-thousand women and adolescent girls;” in Tanzania “teens want straight talk about contraception” and the government’s national health insurance fund is integrating family planning into its rural outreach program; and in Egypt, where “cultural perspectives” are the most important factor in whether a family chooses family planning, the government is distributing one million injectable contraceptives.

Bicycles are one mean of spreading family planning materials and awareness(as in Malawi), as is targeted mobile phone messaging (in Nigeria, South Africa, Bangladesh and India), or home delivery e-commerce sites for pregnancy tests and birth control (as in Rwanda).

Planned Parenthood research finds that when women self-inject the birth control shot, they are more likely to continue usage, while the UK’s leading maternity doctor says women should be able to take abortion pills at home.

Other studies on building capacity: two articles in Obstetrics & Gynecology – one looking at the need for physicians to be advocates and another on creating competency-based objectives for medical trainees to provide for underserved women around the world. K4Health elucidates on a strategy to increase community health worker provision of injectable contraceptives. FPNTC released a webinar on increasing capacity in quality family planning services.

A hopeful note in The Lancet about how this new capacity could achieve an acceleration in family planning in the near future: “Adolescents and young people themselves are increasingly more active and vocal. Especially in the poorest countries, if young people have early comprehensive sexuality and reproductive health education, access to contraceptive choices alongside secondary education, and early discussions on gender norms and power structures among both girls and boys, there might be hope for a future where choices lead to prosperity, wellbeing, and sustainable futures.”

Academic

A need for overhaul of policy on contraception and abortion in India, The Lancet Global Health, January 2018

Disclosure of domestic violence and sexual assault within the context of abortion: meta-ethnographic synthesis of qualitative studies protocol, Systematic Reviews, 15 Dec 2017

Who Meets the Contraceptive Needs of Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa? , Journal of Adolescent Health, 14 Dec 2017

Trends in Health Insurance Coverage of Title X Family Planning Program Clients, 2005–2015, Journal of Women’s Health, 13 Dec 2017

Increased one-year continuation of DMPA among women randomized to self-administration: results from a randomized controlled trial at Planned Parenthood, Contraception, 12 Dec 2017

The incidence of abortion and unintended pregnancy in India, 2015, The Lancet, 12 Dec 2017

Family planning: accelerating the way ahead, The Lancet, 9 Dec 2017

Pregnant women with PTSD have higher levels of stress hormone cortisol, Michigan News, 5 Dec 2017

Training Physicians in Advocacy: Why It Matters, Obstetrics & Gynecology, December 2017

Community Health Worker Provision of Injectable Contraceptives: An Effective CBA2I Strategy, Advancing Partners & Communities/K4Health, December 2017

Estimating Abortion Provision and Abortion Referrals Among United States Obstetrician-Gynecologists in Private Practice, Guttmacher, November 2017