Family Planning and the Role of Health Workers: CapacityPlus Plays Active Role in International Conference on Family Planning
CapacityPlus played a prominent role in the 2011 International Conference on Family Planning, held November 29 – December 2 in Dakar, Senegal. The well-attended conference was cosponsored by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, UNFPA, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. 
CapacityPlus participation included a number of presentations as well as a panel on “Addressing human resources for health barriers to achieving Millennium Development Goal 5b.” At this panel, Patrick Mugirwa of CapacityPlus associate partner Partners in Population and Development gave an overview on “Health workers: Vital to family planning and reproductive health.” CapacityPlus’s Maurice Middleberg talked attendees through a wealth of data on “Family planning and access to health workers: A look at the numbers,” and Kesetebirhan Admasu, state minster of Ethiopia’s Federal Ministry of Health, discussed the role of health extension workers in “Rapidly expanding the health workforce: The case of Ethiopia.”
In other panels, CapacityPlus’s Rebecca Rhodes shared information on “The HRH Global Resource Center: Providing evidence for family planning workforce decisions,” and CapacityPlus’s Rebecca Bailey gave presentations on “People that deliver: Professionalization of supply chain management” and “Reaching out to health workers: Spaced Education.”
On the final evening of the conference, CapacityPlus lead partner IntraHealth International hosted a special event, “Family planning: It takes a health worker.” Participants gathered to celebrate the vital role of health workers in increasing the accessibility and use of family planning services. To learn more, read IntraHealth’s summary of media coverage, new resources, photos, and blog posts.
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Photo by Trevor Snapp. (A nurse gives a sexual education demonstration at Kopsiro Health Center, Mount Elgon District, Kenya)
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