Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—Monday, February 16, 2004

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BALTIMORE—Good face-to-face communication between client and provider is often a key ingredient for successful family planning, and programs must do more to achieve it, according to the new issue of Population Reports, published by the INFO Project at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs (CCP). The authors, Sharon Rudy, Jill Tabbutt-Henry, Lois Schaefer, and Pamela McQuide, collaborated on the report under the auspices of the Maximizing Access and Quality (MAQ) initiative of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and collaborating agencies.

Conventionally, programs have relied on training to foster good client-provider interaction (CPI). While training is important, many other strategies also need to be in place. To assure good communication between family planning clients and providers, programs need to:

• Define good CPI. Disseminate and reinforce policies, guidelines, job descriptions, and protocols that promote good communication practices.
• Give feedback. Focus supervision on CPI and encourage on-site managers, co-workers, clients, and the community to help evaluate communication.
• Make training more effective. Refine curricula, adopt proven training methods, and support trainees' efforts to apply new skills on the job.
• Educate clients to ask questions. Develop mass media campaigns, print materials and client education that legitimate clients' rights and teach them to ask questions.
• Provide facilities. Make sure providers have the space, supplies, and time that providers need to counsel clients effectively.
• Motivate providers. Recognize and reward superior performance.
• Match qualified workers with jobs. Ensure that providers have the knowledge, attitudes, and skills essential for good CPI.

The report entitled Improving Client-Provider Interaction calls on family planning programs and providers to consider clients in a broader context, as members of couples, extended families, informal social networks, and the larger community, and to appreciate the economic pressures, social issues, and local beliefs that shape their decisions.

Providers need to:

• Balance the clients' and providers' roles in decision-making.
• Encourage clients to play an active role.
• Explore clients' thinking about health decisions.
• Address clients' concerns about side effects of contraceptives before and after starting a method.

Full text of the report can be seen on line at: http://www.populationreports.org/Q01/. For printed copies of the report send an e-mail to Orders@jhuccp.org, or write to Orders Department, Johns Hopkins University, Center for Communication Programs, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. A web-based order form can be found at: http://www.jhuccp.org/cgi-bin/orders/orderform.cgi.

Population Reports is an international review journal of important issues in population, family planning, and related matters. It is published four times a year in three languages by the Information for Optimal Health (INFO) project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, Bloomberg School of Public Health, for more than 160,000 family planning and other health professionals worldwide, with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID administers the US foreign assistance program, providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 80 countries worldwide.

For more information contact: Stephen Goldstein at Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, 111 Market Place, Suite 310, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, USA. Tel: 410 659-6331; Fax: 410 659-6266 e-mail: PopReprts@jhuccp.org or press@jhuccp.org. WEB SITE: http://www.infoforhealth.org

Disclaimer: The information provided on this web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.