Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Sarah Alkenbrack, MPH¹, Elaine Menotti, MPH², Rachel Sanders, MPP³, and Suneeta Sharma, PhD, MHA¹. (1) Futures Group International, Constella Group, 1 Thomas Circle, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, 202-777-9727, salkenbrack@futuresgroup.com, (2) University of Michigan Population Fellow, Futures Group/POLICY Project, One Thomas Circle, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, (3) Futures Group International, Constella Group, 1 Thomas Circle, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005

Although the private sector family planning market in East Africa is very small, the potential for growth exists, as this 6-country series of market segmentation studies shows. Increasing the participation of the private sector in Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, would help fill the resource gap that is needed to meet countries' family planning requirements, thereby improving access and fulfilling the unmet need that still hovers between 23 and 36% of married women. This study shows that the prospects of a successful private sector market are good: 50% of Ugandans and 35% of Kenyans are already using the private sector for family planning. However, a large proportion of women with relatively high standards of living are still using the public sector. Only 14 to 35% of public sector resources go to women in the bottom two standard of living quintiles, (which makes up 40% of the population), while the remaining resources are spent on people in the higher quintiles who are more likely to have the ability to pay. With fertility and contraceptive prevalence rates in these countries stagnating, private sector entities – especially NGOs - have a role to play in awareness-raising and increasing access, quality and choice in the family planning market. This session illustrates how expansion of the private sector could increase access, quality and choice in the family planning market, and could free up resources that could be used to increase access to the poor, and result in greater equity.

Learning Objectives:

• To demonstrate how expansion of the private sector family planning market could help improve women's access to family planning products and services in East Africa. 2. To identify populations that should benefit from public sector resources, while identifying the most appropriate markets for private sector expansion of family planning programs in East Africa. 3. To understand how market segmentation analysis can be used as a tool to improve access and equity of family planning programs.

Keywords: Family Planning, Access

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation