Breaking the mold: expanding options for reproductive health awareness: the CARE experience.

The early years of the CARE family planning and reproductive health program were geared primarily toward modern methods of contraception and providing services. However, new and fresh opportunities to address reproductive health awareness and natural family planning are now emerging as important options. In these programs, coordination and collaboration with other sectors such as food and nutrition, children's health and natural resource management, combined with more sophisticated approaches for assessing need and reaching communities with information, has resulted in more people being reached than ever before with appropriate options and opportunities for reproductive health awareness and care. There are examples of CARE projects from India, Peru and Nepal where activities which feature working across development sectors and engaging communities to address their individual and collective RH needs are featured. Ways to disseminate information about reproductive health are being broadened to include creative combinations of interpersonal, mass and folk media', whether it be an informal one-to-one counseling session with flipcharts, a community mobilization event, a multi-media campaign, or any combination thereof. Likewise, the target audience need not always be the women of reproductive age, not should the RH messengers always be the medical and public health professionals. What is critical in all of these instances is to craft strategies based on appropriate research and need, continuously monitor progress, refine approaches as necessary, track results and evaluate the process and impact of interventions leading to behavior change. The challenge is not insignificant, but the rewards to be reaped through the improved programs are clearly worth striving for.