Task sharing strategies have the potential to optimize the skills and competencies of health workers at all levels to increase access to voluntary contraceptive services, including long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) and permanent methods (PMs), within the context of informed choice. PSI hosted a meeting with USAID and its partners, with the LARC and PM Community of Practice (CoP) to discuss current progress and future opportunities for task sharing.

In Nigeria, the shortage of health care workers has resulted in poor use of thousands of facilities for essential health care services. In some parts of the country, community health extension workers are employed but under-utilized. The National Task Shifting and Sharing Policy is aimed at changing the curriculum for pre-service education and in-service training to produce more knowledgeable and skilled health care workers. These measures are temporary and are designed to make the best use of staff currently employed to Nigerian health facilities.

Today, on World Contraception Day, FP2020 and K4Health are pleased to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Family Planning Voices (FP Voices), a digital storytelling initiative to document and share real stories from real people around the world who are passionate about family planning.

Self-injection training materials for health care providers and clients have been added to PATH’s Sayana Press training curriculum. These include in-depth PowerPoint slides to orient providers on training and supporting their clients for successful self-injection. Also included is a client instruction booklet which serves as both a training aid and a memory aid for use when clients self-inject independently after training. Designed for low-literate users, the instruction booklet is highly visual. It is currently available in English. Versions in French and several Senegal and Uganda local languages will be posted in August.

The overall objective of this assessment, "Task Sharing Surgical Methods of Contraception: A Case Study of Clinical Officers in Uganda," was to document the feasibility and scalability of surgical methods of contraception to clinical officers in Uganda.

On November 7, 2014, the Burkina Faso Ministry of Health authorized a family planning tasksharing pilot project in the Centre and Boucle du Mouhoun Regions of the country.

The overall objective of this assessment, Task Sharing Surgical Methods of Contraception in Uganda: Making the Case for Clinical Officers, was to document the feasibility and scalability of surgical methods of contraception to clinical officers in Uganda.

Demonstrating that a health service, such as providing contraceptive implants, can be safely task shared to less highly trained workers is crucial but is only one step toward effective implementation at scale.

With training and supportive supervision, male and female Community Health Extension Workers (CHEWs) in Nigeria safely and effectively provided contraceptive implants, and virtually all clients said they were satisfied.

This presentation, from the AFP 2014 annual partners meeting, provides an update on family planning advocacy efforts in Burkina Faso.