ICRW Commits to Build Evidence on Women’s Access to Family Planning Services
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During the London Summit on Family Planning earlier this month, more than 150 leaders from donor and developing countries, international organizations and the private sector committed to provide 120 million more women in the world’s poorest nations with access to contraceptives by 2020.
Here is what the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) pledged to contribute to the effort:
ICRW commits to expanding the evidence base on the importance of addressing socio-cultural barriers – including intimate partner violence, stigma and partner involvement – when striving to meet women’s demand for reproductive control and use of family planning services. ICRW will leverage new evidence to inform the framing of national reproductive health/family planning policy, development assistance programs and corporate social responsibility programs. ICRW will expand the evidence base linking women’s social and economic empowerment to family planning and sexual and reproductive health. ICRW will also produce new evidence related to adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights and strengthen the connection between adolescent girls’ education and sexual and reproductive health outcomes, including delayed marriage and childbearing. This new evidence will help inform the design of family planning and sexual and reproductive health programs and services delivered through governments, the private sector and civil society. In addition, ICRW will develop and validate metrics to improve our understanding of the benefits that education brings to women’s access to and correct use of family planning.
Related commentary: “Breaking the Invisible Barriers to Birth Control”
Read the press release from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Department of International Aid about the commitments.