Getting it right: lessons learned for family planning costed implementation plans

Since the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, many governments have formally declared their support for family planning through financial, policy, and program commitments. A CIP is a multi-year roadmap that identifies evidence-based strategies and approaches to improve family planning programs, estimates the cost of implementing those strategies, and addresses all components of an FP program, including demand, service delivery and access, procurement and supply chain, policy and enabling environment, financing and resource mobilization, supervision, and monitoring and evaluation. The approach to developing and executing CIPs varies across countries, as the plans align with ongoing initiatives and systems and address each country's unique context. Each new CIP provides an opportunity to tailor technical assistance and tools to help countries achieve their goals, apply lessons learned, strengthen the CIP development process, and enhance the potential impact of the plans when executed. The CIP process is intense and requires engagement of a variety of stakeholders, and a comprehensive CIP is best developed over a period of 4-8 months, depending on the scope of the plan. Active stakeholder engagement breeds commitment, and a truly consultative process contributes to overall success. The CIP process generally includes several consultative structures that meet regularly, allowing partners to be active and informed participants, giving substantive input throughout the process, and cultivating a sense of ownership that translates into a commitment to fully execute and fund the plan. In Nigeria, leading members of the Family Planning/Reproductive Health Technical Working Group felt a real sense of ownership for the National Blueprint (CIP) because they were able to provide essential technical inputs to the document through consultations. An effective CIP must be evidence- and reality-based, and stakeholders must look honestly and critically at current programming and the political, social, and economic environment. The government and its partners in Ghana were very open to reflection about the weaknesses and limitations of the country's FP program, resulting in an honest and comprehensive landscape analysis that created opportunities for real changes and improvements. Goals set in the CIP should be ambitious but realistic to the country's context, and overly ambitious goals can actually demotivate stakeholders and skew resource mobilization efforts. The incorporation of best practices and cross-country learnings can ensure high-quality, innovative programming. While implementing a one-size-fits-all FP program is not recommended, evidence-based best practices should be considered and included where relevant. Best practices adopted should be tailored to fit country needs, and the application of cross-country learnings can help countries avoid reinventing the wheel or investing in approaches shown through experience to have little to no impact. CIPs must be living documents, and systems and expectations should be set that allow the CIP to shift and adapt as necessary to meet goals. Fostering systems and a culture that recognize the CIP as a living document that requires updating and adjusting for proper execution will support smooth implementation and achievement of goals. Annual CIP reviews, including gap analyses to identify resource gaps, help each country's task force develop action plans based on the current situation rather than a fixed goal identified years earlier.