International Conference on Family Planning: Research and Best Practices

15-18 November 2009 / Kampala, Uganda

Persisting unmet need for family planning can undermine the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals and compromise global efforts towards human development.  Although more than 500 million couples in the developing world are satisfied family planning users, another 200 million seek to delay or avoid having a birth but are not using contraception.  The United Nations estimates that by 2050 this demand will grow by 40 percent as record numbers of young people enter the prime reproductive ages.  In some African countries, the level of unmet need for family planning exceeds the level of contraceptive use.

While an extensive base of research on and experience with family planning programs has accumulated over the past forty years, its recent volume is much lower.  The economic impact of reproductive change, such as on poverty or national savings with shifting dependency burdens, needs updating with emerging data.  Likewise, full potential of contraceptive practice in preventing unsafe and unnecessary abortions, maternal and neonatal deaths, or the transmission of HIV to newborns warrants more complete study.  An international forum for scientific and programmatic exchange will enable the sharing of available findings and identification of knowledge gaps, as well as using new knowledge to transform development policy.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,  Makerere University’s School of Public Health, and the Implementing Best Practices Initiative along with other international and national partners, will organize an international conference on family planning research and best practices in Kampala, Uganda in November 2009.  The dates for the conference are November 15 (evening opening) and November 16-18.  November 16 and 17 will focus on research and best practices in family planning, and November 18 will focus on knowledge to action.

It is anticipated that the conference program will include an opening plenary, multiple concurrent oral sessions, special panel presentations, poster sessions, lunchtime roundtables, a policymaker forum (tentative), and an exhibit area.  Journalists are welcome to report on the event.  Pre and post-conference meetings and skill-building workshops are encouraged.  A program will be produced which will include all abstracts accepted for oral or poster presentation, and all materials, including the abstracts and presentations, will be accessible on this website.