Veronica Ades MD, MPH is a Fellow in Reproductive Infectious Disease at the University of California, San Francisco and is spending a year coordinating clinical research in Tororo, Uganda. She attended the International Conference on Family Planning in Kampala November 15th-18th and shared some highlights earlier this week.

The International Conference on Family Planning is taking place in Kampala, Uganda this week. Supported by The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Makerere University, the conference is focused on research and best practices in family planning.

After a keynote address on Sunday by the first lady of Uganda, the conference had many interesting sessions on the intersection of family planning and other related areas, such as the MDGs, vulnerable populations, integration with HIV care, maternal-child health and adolescent health.  In addition, there were sessions on community distribution, effective service delivery, and franchising of services.

A particularly well-attended session entitled “Men and Family Planning” included a number of good ideas on how to integrate men into family planning service delivery, and initiated a heated but stimulating Q&A.  A presentation about acceptability and feasibility of vasectomy was questioned about the adverse effects of vasectomy, and clarified that vasectomy is not castration, and that provision of a vasectomy should still go hand-in-hand with frank discussions about responsible sexual behavior and prevention of STIs.  Another presentation reported results of a randomized intervention study from Nigeria that showed remarkably increased uptake of family planning by women whose husbands accompanied them through the entire labor and delivery process.  The presenter theorized that the increased uptake of contraception came from both the men’s presence at postpartum counseling sessions, but also their presence during the delivery and seeing all that women go through in labor.

Evening sessions have included workshops on applying for funding, training on family planning methods, translating research into policy and costing for program scale up.  A Technology Café by the Implementing Best Practices Initiative provides an opportunity for conference attendees to gain hands-on experience using electronic tools being offered by various organizations.  A cocktail hour hosted by Marie Stopes introduced a new calculator for measuring the impact of family planning programs, and a session this evening by Venture Strategies will discuss Menstrual Regulation (M.R.) – the practice of bringing on a woman’s late menstrual period without knowing whether or not she is pregnant.

CORRECTION: The original post indicated that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for Population and Reproductive Health was a sponsor of the conference; however, the Gates Foundation itself was not a sponsor. As has been corrected above, The Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University was a sponsor. -Jaspal, 30-Nov-2009