Family Planning Advocacy Toolkit

This toolkit shares evidence-based advocacy guidance and tools to add family planning (FP) to the voices of existing advocacy networks, enable leaders at all levels in low- and middle-income countries to advocate for FP, and grow FP champions for sustainable organisations. A renewed focus on expanding access to FP has come about in response to research finding that unmet need for family planning remains unacceptably high. Furthermore, FP contributes to all 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is explicit in Target 3.7: By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health (SHR) care services, including for FP, information and education, and the integration of RH into national strategies and programmes. To support these and other global goals, the K4Health Family Planning Advocacy Toolkit provides advocates at all levels, including international, national, and community leaders, with the information and tools they need to make the case for improved access to voluntary FP.

Resources selected for inclusion in this toolkit were published by organisations working throughout the world to advocate for expanded access to contraception and to improve the delivery of FP services. These resources include:

• evidence of the links between FP and other development issues, including health, economic development, the environment, food security, education, and poverty reduction.
• Policy resources, including guidance on the policy process, key policy commitments and calls to action, information on funding and resource management, and country examples of policy influence.
• Guidance and tools for designing an advocacy strategy.
• Tools for effective communication for FP advocacy, including: resources for communication skills development; FP advocacy communication tools; guidance on engaging faith-based organisations, religious and spiritual leaders, and other champions; and information on how to work with the media.
• Data and evidence in support of voluntary FP - both data sources and data translation tools for use by advocates working to craft their messages and ready-to-use evidence briefs and fact sheets published by global research organisations.
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) resources, including backgrounders on M&E advocacy efforts, M&E guides, and various measurement tools and indicators.

Within each Toolkit page, lists of resources are ordered according to publication date, and within the same publication year, resources are ordered alphabetically. Click on the title of the resource for more information about it, or click on the full-text link to get direct access to the full publication. K4Health offers an offline version of this and other toolkits on CD-ROM to people working in low- and middle-income countries with limited internet access. Click here to order.