The purpose of this brief is to guide health care service providers in offering quality LAM services within their maternal and child health, reproductive health and family planning programs.

  In developing countries, PAC programs are frequently available only in urban or regional health facilities, placing rural women at greater risk for mortality and morbidity from complications because they lack access to services. To improve access, USAID has worked with two focus countries, Senegal and Tanzania, to decentralize PAC activities. Required criteria for focus countries were commitment from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and matching funds from the USAID Mission to assist with scale-up and the sustainability of activities.  

This brief focuses on the following points: Women with HIV/AIDS, including those who are taking ARVs, can start and use almost all family planning methods safely and effectively. Women on ARVs need access to contraception for compelling reasons. To successfully reach ARV recipients, contraceptive services need to be integrated with HIV care from the start.  

This brief provides an overview of contraceptive implants. It discusses implant types, method characteristics, health benefits, conditions that may make use of implants unsafe, sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, programmatic considerations, and lessons learned.

This brief finds that curriculum-based reproductive health and HIV education programs reach large numbers of young people and can help them reduce sexual risk taking and that evidence-based standards can guide programs to adapt, develop, and implement effective curricula.

This brief discusses the following topics: life-stage perspective identifies continuing needs, continuing-client strategy refocuses program goals, good-quality services encourage clients to continue, and ways in which family planning providers can encourage continuation.

This brief focuses on the following points: No conclusive evidence exists that hormonal contraceptive use increases the risk of HIV acquisition, transmission, or disease progression. Current knowledge does not indicate a need to change existing recommendations that women at risk of HIV infection or those who are HIV-infected may safely use hormonal contraception. Hormonal contraceptive users at elevated risk of HIV infection should also use condoms consistently and correctly.  

This brief makes the case for immediate postpartum insertion of an IUD by providing the background on the topic, discussing the available evidence, and touching on the programmatic implications.

This brief focuses on male circumcision (MC) and provides a history background on this topic. In addition, it discusses the endorsement of MC for HIV prevention by WHO and UNAIDS, programmatic considerations, and lessons learned.

This brief finds that the belief that contraceptive pills and patches cause women to gain significant weight is not supported by the evidence and that counseling could reduce misperceptions about weight gain and decrease the number of women who discontinue the use of these effective contraceptives.

This brief focuses on the following points: Medical barriers often prevent clients from using their desired method of family planning. The pregnancy, COC, DMPA, and IUD checklists can effectively increase access to family planning while helping ensure client safety. Introduction of checklists into service delivery settings should include careful training on how to use the checklists as well as the medical eligibility criteria on which they are based.

This brief focuses on the following points: Married adolescent girls are highly vulnerable, yet health care providers and then community often ignore their needs. Avoiding early childbearing is crucial to preventing maternal and infant mortality. Addressing the high unmet need for family planning in this group is a key strategy. Programs need to lower the many hurdles these girls face in using a family planning method and to ensure good access and quality.

This brief focuses on the following points: Unnecessary service delivery barriers often prevent women from initiating and continuing oral contraceptive use. Providers can employ five simple strategies to reduce medical barriers to oral contraceptive provision resulting in faster and safer delivery, and improved counseling and use of OCs.  

This brief states: As demand for injectable contraceptives continues to rise rapidly, programs are challenged to expand access and improve the quality of care. To expand access, programs need to keep injectables in stock, train more providers, and find ways to offer injectables in rural and isolated areas. Good-quality services ensure that providers counsel clients well, give injections safely, and properly dispose to used needles and syringes.

This brief focuses on the following statements:

This brief discusses the following points:

This brief discusses the following points:

This brief focuses on the following points: Provision of family planning methods is a central feature of postabortion care. When family planning methods are available onsite for all clients treated for incomplete abortion or miscarriage, clients, providers, and programs benefit.

Complete sexual abstinence is the most effective means of protection against both pregnancy and HIV infection. Messages encouraging abstinence appear to work best when aimed at younger youth who are not yet sexually active, especially girls.

This brief focuses on the following points:

Programs and providers are now making IUDs more available. Reasons for this resurgence include: Recognition of the IUDs many advantages, New research findings on safety - resulting in liberalized guidance from WHO, A new program strategy, focusing on developing a core of skilled providers motivated to offer IUDs.

The Standard Days Method (SDM) is an effective new natural method of family planning developed through scientific analysis of the fertile time in the woman's menstrual cycle. With its simplicity, low supply cost, and attractiveness for couples not previously using contraception, more and more programs are including it among the options they offer.

This brief focuses on the following points:

Young people today face greater risk of unintended pregnancies than ever before. More education about contraception is needed, as well as greater access to services and products. Integrating such services into existing youth programs is often the most cost-effective approach.