Frontiers in Reproductive Health | Publications/Resources

FRONTIERS
Program Briefs
Council researchers' names appear in boldface type.

2008
Vernon, Ricardo. "Meeting the family planning needs of postpartum women," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 10. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 10
The first days, weeks, and months following a delivery represent a period of substantial service and information needs to ensure and maintain the health of both mother and child. Family planning information and services are critical to preserving maternal and infant health, but are rarely included in postpartum and postnatal service packages. This brief discusses findings from studies that tested approaches for improving women’s access to postpartum contraception in Africa, Asia and the Near East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. (PDF, 1.9 MB)

Vernon, Ricardo. "Increasing women's use of the IUD for family planning," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 9. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 9
The IUD is highly effective, easy to use, and cost-effective for providers and clients, and provides up to ten years of protection from unwanted pregnancy. With training, both professional and paraprofessional providers can insert and remove IUDs, which makes the method a good option for clients in health posts and rural areas. Despite its many advantages, the IUD is underused. This brief describes findings from studies in Africa, Asia and the Near East, and Latin America and the Caribbean to investigate factors affecting IUD use and test ways to enhance access to and use of the method. (PDF, 1.1 MB)

2007
Janowitz, Barbara, John Bratt, Rick Homan, and Jim Foreit. "How much will it cost to scale up a reproductive health pilot project?" FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 8. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 8.
Most service delivery interventions begin as pilot projects. When a pilot study of an intervention is successful, managers begin to think about scaling up the project to new areas. Cost is a critical factor influencing the extent and pace of scale-up. This brief explains how to adapt and modify cost information obtained from a pilot project to estimate scale-up costs. The brief shows why the costs of a pilot project alone are not sufficient to predict costs of scale-up, and gives examples of how costs are influenced by factors like economies and diseconomies of scale, resource substitution, and intervention modification. The purpose of the brief is not to provide a “cookbook” for estimating scale-up costs. Rather, it is designed to help managers think critically about the factors that must be considered in estimating the costs of scaling up an effective intervention. (PDF, 2.4 MB)

2006
Janowitz, Barbara. "Make better use of provider time in public health clinics," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 7. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 7.
Faced with an increasing demand for reproductive health services while funding stagnates, program managers seek to examine the productivity and costs of service provision in public health clinics. This program brief focuses on provider time use and how programs can make better use of existing labor resources. Increasing providers' productivity, defined by time spent with clients, can enhance the financial sustainability of programs and improve services for clients. (PDF, 2 MB)

Foreit, James R. “Systematic screening: A strategy for determining and meeting clients’ reproductive health needs,” FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 6. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 6
This program brief discusses the results of four FRONTIERS OR studies on systematic screening in Bolivia, Honduras, India, and Senegal. Systematic screening is a simple intervention to increase the number of services received at a single client visit. When implemented fully, systematic screening increased the number of services received per client visit by 9–35 percent. Systematic screening can improve women's health by addressing multiple unmet needs for reproductive and other health services. (PDF, 348 KB)

Foreit, James R. "Building capacity to utilize operations research: Strategies and lessons learned," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 5. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 5
While there is a long tradition of training researchers to produce research, there are few lessons on how to teach managers to request and use research results for making program decisions. Addressing this gap has been a major strategy of the FRONTIERS program, which has supported a variety of capacity-building activities since 1998 to increase the number of program managers and researchers who can understand and conduct OR and utilize the resulting findings. This program brief presents lessons learned through FRONTIERS capacity-building work in fostering the increased use of operations research by family planning and reproductive health programs. (PDF, 372 KB)

2005
Foreit, James R. "Postabortion family planning benefits clients and providers," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 4. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 4
Provision of family planning methods is a central feature of postabortion care. Ensuring reliable on-site availability of family planning methods for all clients following abortion or miscarriage can result in benefits for clients, providers, and programs. (PDF, 560 KB)

2003
León, Federico R., Alex Ríos, Adriana Zumarán, Marisela de la Cruz, Carlos Brambila, and John H. Bratt. "Enhancing quality for clients: The balanced counseling strategy," FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 3. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 3
The balanced counseling strategy structures the client–provider interaction to focus on the client’s needs, support the client’s choice of an appropriate method, and improve the information provided on the method. This program brief outlines the origin and rationale for developing the strategy and details its subsequent adaptation for use in other contexts. To improve the quality of the client–provider interaction, Population Council staff developed a “balanced counseling strategy,” a type of algorithm or decision tree, to be used in combination with several job aids, or visual memory aids. Studies in several sites have documented significant improvements in the client–provider interaction when providers use the balanced counseling strategy along with the job aids. (full text)

2002
Green, Cynthia, Stephanie Joyce, and James R. Foreit. "Using men as community-based distributors of condoms," FRONTIERS Program Brief and Summary no. 2. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 2
The HIV/AIDS epidemic has led program managers to seek approaches to family planning that will also help combat HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). These approaches include use of simplified STI diagnosis and treatment protocols and promotion of male and female condoms. One aspect of condom promotion that is receiving increased attention is the idea of adding men to community-based distribution (CBD) programs in order to increase the use of condoms as dual protection against STIs and pregnancy. (PDF, 210 KB)
Summary (PDF, 68 KB)

2001
Huntington, Dale. "Satisfaire les besoins sanitaires des femmes en matière de soins aprés avortement" [Meeting women's health care needs after abortion], FRONTIERS Program Brief and Summary no. 1. Washington, DC: Population Council. (PDF, 216 KB)
Résumé (PDF, 45 KB)

Huntington, Dale. "Cómo satisfacer las necesidades de salud de la mujer después de un aborto" [Meeting women's health care needs after abortion], FRONTIERS Program Brief and Summary no. 1. Washington, DC: Population Council. (PDF, 1044 KB)
Sìntesis (PDF, 195 KB)

2000
Huntington, Dale. "Meeting women's health care needs after abortion," FRONTIERS Program Brief and Summary no. 1. Washington, DC: Population Council.

FRONTIERS Program Brief no. 1
Worldwide, one in eight pregnancy-related deaths result from complications of unsafe abortion such as bleeding, infection or internal injuries. Many of these deaths could be prevented if women had the means to avoid unplanned pregnancy. At the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, 180 governments identified postabortion care (PAC) as a high-priority public health issue. As part of the resulting global PAC initiative, the Population Council and other international organizations collaborated with governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a worldwide program of operations research (OR) on interventions to improve PAC. (PDF, 424 KB)
Summary (PDF, 133 KB)

Copies of conference reports, summaries, program briefs, and research updates are available free of charge. Contact frontiers@popcouncil.org. FRONTIERS publications are also available on the USAID/DEC Web site, www.dec.org.