Involving Men and Boys in Family Planning (Involve FP) in low- and middle-income countries

Involving Men and Boys in Family Planning (Involve FP) in low- and middle-income countries

Co hosted by CEDIL and ICRW Asia

Date: 23 February 2022

A little more than 25 years ago at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (1994) the Programme of Action on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights (SRHR) emphasized the importance of male involvement in SRHR.

Since then, there have been a number of interventions, programmes and studies that have included men as partners, addressed male involvement in SRH services including family planning, focused on men’s SRHR needs and worked with men to transform unequal gender power relations and norms by addressing masculinities or male norms.

In this seminar, we seek to present a CEDIL funded systematic review alongside key partners working in the field, the World Health Organization and the International Center for research on Women (ICRW) Asia.
Together we will present our understandings of the state of the evidence on engaging men and boys in family planning in LMICs and especially we present an analysis of the programme characteristics and components that can lead to male engagement and meeting the family planning needs of women and men in LMICS.

Speakers

Ravi Verma
Asia Regional Director @International Center for Research on Women
Ravi Verma is the Asia Regional Director for the International Center for Research on Women. Ravi has over three decades of experience working on issues relating to girls’ and women’s empowerment, as well as gender equality. His research focuses on primary violence prevention, child marriage prevention, sexual and reproductive health issues, as well as engaging men and challenging masculine norms. Throughout his career he has held multiple positions within the Government of India, as a professor at the International Institute for Population Sciences and as a member of High-Level Committee on the Status of Women (HLCSW). Ravi also serves on many strategic, National and International Advisory Board and Committee. He currently serves on Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health, International Advisory Board, Global Health 5050; and on the operations research subcommittee of the National COVID 19 taskforce (NTF).
 

Maria Lohan
Professor of Social Science and Health @Queen’s University Belfast
Maria Lohan is Professor of Social Science and Health at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast. She specializes in research on sexual and reproductive health and rights. During the last three years she has been a consultant to the WHO leading a team to systematically review the global evidence on male engagement in sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has led research trials of engaging adolescent boys in gender-transformative relationship and sexuality education (the Jack Trial) and is contributing to further adaptations of the Jack Trial in Southern Africa and South America with Stellenbosch University, Universidad de la República Uruguay and Universidad de Medellín. She is co-lead of CEDIL-funded INVOLVE_FP Project
 

Áine Aventin
Lecturer @Queen’s University Belfast
Dr Áine Aventin is a Lecturer at the School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is a Social Psychologist, specialising in complex behavioural intervention development, optimisation and evaluation. Her research focuses on addressing global challenges in sexual and reproductive health. Dr Aventin currently co-leads an UKRI/MRC funded project in Southern Africa involving optimisation and evaluation of a gender transformative sexual and reproductive health interventions for adolescents. She is also co-principal investigator of the CEDIL-funded INVOLVE_FP Project, which involves a systematic review of interventions involving men and boys in family planning.
 

Avni Amin
Technical Officer @World Health Organisation
Avni Amin works at the WHO’s Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research on violence against women. Her primary focus is to support countries – Ministries of Health – in the translation and uptake of WHO’s normative guidelines and tools to strengthen health systems response to violence against women. She has led the development of clinical guidelines for responding to child and adolescent sexual abuse, the RESPECT prevention framework, and is a lead author of the WHO global plan of action on strengthening health systems response to addressing interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls and against children. Avni is a passionate feminist scientist with a fierce commitment to gender equality and women’s health. She has a PhD in International Health from the Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health. She is originally from India and considers herself as a global citizen.
 

Chair

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick Ward

Patrick Ward is CEDIL Programme Director and has overall responsibility for the delivery of the programme, working closely with the Research Director as a member of the CEDIL Directorate. He oversees the Programme Directorate team in OPM and liaises with DFID, consortium members and other stakeholders. Patrick Ward is Director of Oxford Policy Management’s Statistics, Evidence and Accountability programme. He has more than 20 years’ experience in leading work in the monitoring and evaluation of development for both donor-financed programmes and government systems, particularly in the social sectors.

 

Further reading:

Kneale D, Thomas J, Bangpan M, Waddington H, Gough D, 2018 Causal Chain Analysis in Systematic Reviews of International Development Interventions CEDIL Inception Paper
4: London

White, H. (2021) ‘Using causal chain analysis in systematic reviews’, CEDIL Methods Brief 4, London and Oxford: CEDIL. Available at: https://doi.org/10.51744/CMB4

Ruane-McAteer et al. (2019). Interventions addressing men, masculinities and gender equality in sexual and reproductive health and rights: an evidence-and-gap map and systematic review of reviews. BMJ Global Health, 4(5),e001634 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001634

Ruane-McAteer et al. (2020). Gender-transformative programming with men and boys to improve SRHR: a systematic review of intervention studies. BMJ Global Health 2020, 5(10), e002997 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002997

Aventin, Á., Robinson, M., Hanratty, J., Ruane‐McAteer, E., Tomlinson, M., Clarke, M., . . . Lohan, M. (2021). PROTOCOL: Involving men and boys in family planning: A systematic review of the effective components and characteristics of complex interventions in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 17(1). https://doi.org/doi: 10.1002/cl2.1140

Robinson, M., Aventin, A., Hanratty, J., Ruane-McAteer, E., Tomlinson, M., Clarke, M., . . . Lohan, M. (2021). Nothing so practical as theory: a rapid review of the use of behaviour change theory in family planning interventions involving men and boys. Reprod Health, 18(1), 126. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-021-01173-0

Sahay, A., Joseph, J., Prashad, V.P., Yadav, K., Jha, S., Vachhar, K., Seth, K. 2021. “How are Men and Couples Engaged in Family Planning?” Learnings from a Review of Programs. New Delhi: International Center for Research on Women.

 

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