Oral

This session present research demonstrating that the involvement of community level workers increases birth spacing knowledge and use, and that community-based health workers provide service that are of equal or better quality than clinicians. The first presentation will discuss data from India where community- level interventions for safe medication abortion services were tested. The second paper focuses on Guinea where the CPR is only 6%, but religious barriers have limited family planning access. The effectiveness of engaging religious leaders to reach women and their partners with family planning services will be discussed. Data from operations research in India will be presented suggesting that community health workers were more effective than facility-level workers in reaching first-time family planning users with the Standard Days Method® (SDM). The final presentation in the US presents the results of an innovative program providing the SDM to Somali refugees, which resulted in high acceptance and continuation.

Session Objectives: 1. Discuss the importance of community health workers and their role in FP services. 2. Analyze the difficult situation of religious biases and how to work with religious leaders to alleviate them. 3. Describe the importance of SDM and its impact of Somali refugees.

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing