Background

Led by EngenderHealth and partners, RESPOND is the USAID-funded global project that seeks to increase the use of high-quality family planning (FP) services, through ensuring a wide range of contraceptive options including the informed and voluntary use of long-acting and permanent contraception (long-acting methods include the IUD and hormonal implants; permanent methods include male and female sterilization).  

Among contraceptive methods, LA/PMs are the most effective, and have the lowest discontinuation rates. They have great potential to respond to clients' reproductive intentions, particularly to achieve healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies and/or to achieve desired family size. However, they remain underutilized for a variety of reasons, including lack of community awareness and support, provider biases, and clinical and health system challenges. This project provides specialized capacity to enable programs to address and overcome these issues so as to support the full range of family planning and other reproductive health services in a manner consistent with informed choice and clients' rights and with full attention to gender equity, quality and the fundamentals of care.   

RESPOND is designed to meet its objective through 3 main results areas:

• Result 1: Global leadership in the application of state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches for LA/PMs
• Result 2: Advancing knowledge to strengthen LA/PM programming
• Result 3: Strengthening supply-demand, and the enabling environment for RH/FP services, with a focus on LA/PMs.

The first two results support RESPOND's collaboration with USAID to advance a global leadership agenda to support increased commitment, resources and action related to LA/PM programming. The third result is geared towards supporting country programs to expand RH/FP services, through a variety of mechanisms, including: field support, partnership with USAID bilateral projects or other donor-funded efforts. The intent is for the project to achieve synergy by working at the global and field levels. Global leadership will inform and advance efforts at the country level, and countries will influence and inform the global agenda.