Fernando Gonzales, MD, MPH, Population Council, Bolivia, Guachalla 344 - Piso 3, La Paz, Bolivia, Ricardo Vernon, PhD, FRONTIERS Program, Population Council, Panzacola 62 - 102, Col. Villa Coyoacán, Mexico City, 04000, Mexico, (52)(55) 5999-8650, rvernon@popcouncil.org.mx, and Erica Palenque, BA, PROCOSI, Av. 20 de Octubre 2164, La Paz, Bolivia.

This paper presents the results of a Gender Program that PROCOSI, a network of Bolivian NGOs, implemented to improve the quality of reproductive health care from gender perspective. During this project, PROCOSI conducted 1,925 household interviews, before and after the intervention.

One of the variables that were assessed was the changes in unmet need for contraceptive methods, defined as the proportion of married, non-pregnant women that do not want to get pregnant in the next two years and are not using contraception although they would like to. We believe this variable is crucial to evaluate the effects of the gender programs, since any gender program in reproductive health service organizations must try to help women meet their fertility goals. According with that, the Gender Program introduced the systematic screening for family planning as part of the user – provider interaction.

The results show that the unmet need for spacing changed between surveys from 9.1% to 6.9%. Adding the condition that the woman would like to be using a contraceptive method, the change in the unmet need for contraception decreased from 6.6% to 3.8%. Finally, combining the unmet needs for limiting and spacing with desire to use, we observed a change in the total unmet needs from 25.5% to 20.8%.

This study demonstrate the successfully use of the systematic screening tools to reduce the unmet needs for family planning.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will learn strategies (systematic screening tools)that can be used for the service providers to decrease the family planning unmet needs

Keywords: Screening Instruments,

Related Web page: None

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.