Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #114421

Jennifer L. Mason, MPH, CHES¹, Graciela Salvador-Davila, MD, MPH, MS¹, Taroub Harb Faramand, MD, MPH², Caroline Tran, MA¹, Veronique Dupont, MPH¹, and Orlando Hernandez, PhD¹. (1) CATALYST Consortium, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036, 202-775-1977, jmason@pacthq.org, (2) The CATALYST Consortium, 1201 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036

In 2003 the CATALYST Consortium initiated an optimal birth spacing grants program, which provides funding, technical assistance and support to health and non-health NGOs in five countries. The NGOs have been awarded based on their demonstration of need for reproductive health and family planning (RH/FP) initiatives within their target areas and the desire and commitment to promote the CATALYST's Optimal Birth Spacing Interval (OBSI) recommendations as a way to focus attention on FP and to improve access to RH/FP services and to increase contraceptive use.

The local NGOs have used participatory approaches in designing and implementing their projects and have sought and received the support of community members and leaders, organizations, governmental institutions and RH service providers. Each of the CATALYST's NGO partners have different program areas and experiences; among them they have been able to engage health practitioners, community members and special interest groups such as males, youth and hard-to-reach populations in creating awareness of the health and social benefits of adopting OBSI recommendations within the promotion and support of FP and general RH.

The author will discuss the purpose of the Small Grants program and the types of technical assistance and support provided by CATALYST. Short project descriptions that detail the strategies used by the NGOs to promote RH/FP through OBSI education will be included along with lessons learned. Information will be presented from qualitative and quantitative surveys that highlight the increases in knowledge on OBSI and FP and contraceptive use among program beneficiaries.

Learning Objectives:

• · At the conclusion of the presentation the audience will be able to describe the CATALYST Consortium’s main purpose in creating an OBSI Small Grants Program in five countries
• · At the conclusion of the presentation the audience will be able to identify at least three ways to utilize OBSI recommendations to introduce Family Planning activities into health and non-health NGO’s
• · At the conclusion of the presentation the audience will recognize how NGO OBSI projects led to increased knowledge and use of Family Planning methods among targeted community members

Keywords: Family Planning, International Reproductive Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation