Robert Engelman, MS, Research Department, Population Action International, 1300 19th Street, N.W., Second Floor, Washington, DC 20036, 202-557-3403, re@popact.org

Learning Objectives:

• A three-decade history of linking health, family planning and environmental interventions in community-based projects in developing countries has generated interest, including from donors, in the fields of population, reproductive health, community development, and wildlife conservation. Frustratingly, however, the long experience with projects has not translated into an accepted approach to monitoring and evaluation and has instead produced mostly anecdotal evidence for what works, what does not, and which practices are best. Among the challenges is how to measure synergistic aspects of this linkage. How, for example, might practitioners judge whether linking services is more efficient or effective than conventional single-sector approaches? Given an institutional cultural stress on meeting the expressed needs of people in communities, how does one measure outcomes in areas where the interests of practitioners and community members may differ? Adding to the complications, methods of monitoring and evaluation are fairly well developed within the reproductive health field, but this is less true within the fields of community development and community-based natural resource management. Missions and the likely time scales of impacts differ significantly among these consituencies, complicating the measurement of outcomes. Nonetheless, creative thinking may lead to new metrics for this linkage. This presentation will briefly review the history of the concept of linking reproductive health and environmental activities in communities, discuss the reasons the linkage may be useful to the public health field and other constituencies, and address the challenges of how to improve the monitoring and evaluation of such projects.

Keywords: Community, Reproductive Health

Related Web page: www.populationaction.org/resources/factsheets/fact_sheet17_CBPE.htm

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.