Making policies work for the Poor in Peru

In order to understand how to improve access to family planning (FP) among the rural poor in Peru, we conducted market segmentation, system diagnosis and operational barriers analysis and conducted key stakeholder interviews in the region of Junin. The findings revealed barriers that impede access to FP services among the poor including a lack of accurate, culturally appropriate information about modern FP methods; limited financing for training, supervision, monitoring, or IEC for family planning; and operational barriers resulting from the integrated health model and its effects on service provision.

To address the complex issues of ensuring access to family planning and to implement sustainable solutions, we identified appropriate policy interventions at three levels of government--local, regional, and central. The development and implementation of these interventions involved several processes: awareness-raising among a broad range of stakeholders at national and subnational levels, building partnerships and support, tapping into multisectoral planning groups, local capacity building, mobilizing information for decisionmaking, and updating pro-poor monitoring and evaluation indicators.

The following three pro-poor strategies were selected and implemented to address the identified problems: (1) strengthening the FP/RH educational component of JUNTOS (conditional cash transfer program) and developing culturally appropriate FP counseling guidelines and training (local interventions); (2) mobilizing regional resources for IEC & quality improvement strategies (regional intervention); and (3) including family planning in the package of services offered to poor women through social insurance (central intervention). We will share lessons learned and recommendations for replication of the selected approaches.