Advance Family Planning (AFP)
About the Project:
Advance Family Planning (AFP) is an advocacy initiative that aims to increase the financial investment and political commitment needed to ensure access to quality, voluntary family planning to achieve the global goal of expanding access to quality contraceptive information, services and supplies.
The AFP SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound) advocacy approach aims to transform the way family planning champions maximize their time and funds to effectively persuade those in power to take action.
Project Goal & Objectives:
The primary goal of AFP is to improve access to and use of family planning services, information, and supplies. By increasing funding, decreasing policy barriers, and increasing the importance of family planning among policymakers at global, regional, national, and sub-national levels.
With specific objectives;
- By June 2019 the Government of Uganda allocates funds for commodity handling and storage under the Alternative Distribution Strategy (ADS)
- Ministry of Health allocates 10% of the RMNCAH budget to the adolescent health division by June 2019
- Ministry of Health develops and approves guidelines to streamline the district costed implementation plans (DCIP) by October 2019
- The Uganda National Council for Higher Education approves inclusion of FP/SRHR into university health programmes by August 2019
- By October 2019 the Uganda media (national and subnational) produce 10 quality articles on FP commodity stock out; adolescent access; inadequate FP allocations/financing; myths and misconceptions targeting decision makers
- By October 2019, the National Drug Authority approves scale up of drug shops offering injectable contraceptives including DMPA-SC at the completion of the undergoing pilot
- The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health (MoH) approves the Total Market Approach (TMA) strategy for FP- including DMPA-SC by May 2019
- By October 2019 the Ministry of Health develops a plan to roll out the revised HMIS tools that include DMPA-SC and PP-FP; two districts adopt the plan and all health facilities report on DMPA-SC and PPFP
- By April 2019 four districts develop smart strategies to operationalize the commodity Redistribution Strategy to ensure continuous availability of commodity contraceptives including DMPA-SC at all health facilities
- By October 2019 four districts develop strategies/actions for young people have access to commodities including DMPA-SC
- By October 2019, 10 AFP targeted districts for 2019 graduation have allocated funds to their district specific CIPs/FP programming.
AFP targets policy makers.
The global goal of expanding access to quality contraceptive information, services and supplies
Strengthening strategic partnerships created synergies while engaging on high level policy advocacy. The secretariat helped to coordinate partners and reduced duplication of efforts. We also engaged networks such as the SRHR Alliance to cascade the AFP SMART approach to members of their network. Through AFP, there has been partnerships with a number of NGOs including FHI360, PATH, CHAI, and ministry of health on our advocacy efforts at national level including: approval of drug shops to offer injectable contraceptives, scaling up DMPA-SC, securing funding for capacity strengthening of health workers and increasing youth access to SRHR/FP information and services, among others.
Coordination meetings with the Bill and Gates Foundation funded organisations in Uganda (Action 4 Health (formerly DSW), CHAI, Engender Health, JPHIEGO, Path, PMA2020, SAMASHA, Track2020 and UFPC) to share updates on synergies- especially with PMA2020 and Track 2020