In 2017, India had committed to its FP2020 goals of driving access, choice, and quality family planning services so as to increase the modern contraceptive usage by 1.2%. India had also aimed to meet 74% of the demand by strengthening supply chains and introducing new contraceptive options. While the cost-effectiveness of Family Planning as a means to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been underlined, what makes Family Planning a key priority on the development agenda is that the earlier a country invests in Family Planning, the greater the returns are in the long run.
Population Foundation of India promotes and advocates for the effective formulation and implementation of gender-sensitive population, health and development strategies and policies. One of PFI’s key objectives is to improve service delivery of family planning programmes. PFI’s commitment to rights-based family planning is reflected in their work on advocacy of choice and realisation of rights in delivery of FP services. Over past years, PFI has developed a range of communication products for a variety of stakeholders - youth, young couples, and policy makers to list a few. These include short films, TV series, integrated communication campaigns, job aids, comics and so on. However, may organisations and governments lack adequate resources for developing impactful communication products. Therefore PFI, through a careful and selective process, wanted to tap into its past resources to develop a communication package that can be deployed by governments and development organisations who are currently engaged in interventions on family planning.
They partnered with StratComm for developing a Family Planning package, which would work alongside Mission Parivar Vikas to augment service delivery with increased awareness and drive greater demand for FP services. The FP package will work in alignment with a rights-based framework of Family Planning to influence stakeholder behaviour on three key issues: contraceptive methods, uptake of FP services, and gender equality.
The FP package makes use of films, TV spots, card sets, brochures and songs to deliver communication across multiple channels, on key areas such as contraceptive choices, birth spacing, sex selection, gender-based violence, nutrition, and social beliefs surrounding these realities. The package will come with job aids for field workers to deliver messaging in a structured and timed manner through interactive and engaging activity-based sessions. The content of these sessions has been developed in Hindi, with careful consideration of the ground realities of stakeholders, that enables field workers to truly engage with the stakeholders and assist them through key stages of behaviour change. This 360-degree approach to influencing behaviour through thorough analysis of stakeholder realities, delivery channels, capacity of field workers and existing frameworks under MPV ensures lasting change in the target areas at low cost of intervention. The contents of the FP package will be used by program managers, counsellors, outreach workers, members of self-help groups and peer educators to conduct behaviour change sessions in the target areas.
At StratComm, we approach our clients’ communication requirements through a two-pronged approach, where we use research and latest developments across domains to create strategies that work the best for the identified intervention areas. Under this engagement, we are also working with PFI to develop an Adolescent Health package, which complements the FP package by addressing key issues in adolescent sexual and reproductive health. The AH package will address reproductive health, nutrition, substance abuse, mental health and other issues among adolescents and will augment the RKSK and other efforts around adolescent health and SRH.