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State-of-the-art research and workshops
CATALYST documents state-of-the-art approaches and best practices in nine focus areas related to sexual and reproductive health:
¨ Adolescent sexual and reproductive health
¨ Birth spacing
¨ Behavior change communication
¨ Emergency contraception
¨ Empowerment
¨ Postabortion care
¨ Sustainability (including commercial sector partnerships and corporate social responsibility)
¨ Health Sector Reform
¨ South-to-South
CATALYST is available to conduct workshops in any of these areas in any of the regions where we work. These workshops can be for USAID Missions and other local agencies and will be tailored to the needs and interests of the participants.
Lessons Learned in Youth Programs in Egypt and India
CEDPAs Better Life Options program in India and New Horizons program in Egypt are often considered two of the most effective programs for empowering girls and boys and improving their reproductive health. CATALYST is now working with local program managers to document the unique processes that resulted in these two similar yet specialized adolescent family life programs. The resulting document will allow others to duplicate not only the process of program development, but also the scale-up strategy.
Health Sector Reform Success in Colombia
Colombia s experience with health sector reform (HSR) in the 1990s is widely believed to be a success. Within the reform process, PROFAMILIA/Colombia played a unique role in ensuring access to family planning and reproductive health services. CATALYST is documenting this experience to provide a unique look at:
¨ how PROFAMILIA promoted FP/RH services for all;
¨ the impact of health sector reform on the PROFAMILIA organizations; and
¨ the internal adaptations necessary for PROFAMILIAs survival in the new competitive environment that emerged
Look for this publication soon!
Family Planning/HIV Integration
CATALYST and Advance Africa are surveying USAID cooperating agencies and other organizations to determine the magnitude and type of FP/HIV/AIDS integration activities being carried out in the field. USAID will use the results as the basis for designing a new and more effective strategy to address the threat of HIV/AIDS worldwide. Look for the report soon!
Birth Spacing Workshop, 2002
CATALYST is developing a strategy to place birth spacing on the global public health agenda. Research shows that birth intervals of three years or more are associated with improved health and nutritional status of infants, children and women. Findings also demonstrate that demand for spacing births is met at a lower pace than demand for limiting births and that, especially in developing countries, there are significant lost opportunities to improve womens and childrens health outcomes
To inaugurate its strategy, CATALYST held a Birth Spacing Champions Meeting on January 31, 2002 for 30 participants from USAID, multilateral agencies, cooperating agencies and researchers and academics to review the data and discuss ways to strengthen birth spacing needs in reproductive health programs. Seventeen of the participants agreed to become birth spacing champions and join CATALYST in four working groups focusing on policy, healthcare service delivery, the role of the pharmaceutical sector and the role of the media.
Postabortion Care Consortium Newsletter and Website
The Postabortion Care Consortium was formed in 1993 to encourage major donors to address the benefits of postabortion care (treating complications, providing FP counseling, referring clients to comprehensive RH services) to save womens lives and empower them to fulfill their reproductive intentions. On behalf of the Post-Abortion Care Consortium, CATALYST will publish a bi-yearly newsletter and launch a PAC Consortium website to keep the PAC community and other interested organizations up to date on PAC activities, state-of-the-art approaches to PAC, and policy issues. To join the mailing list for the newsletter, please write to .
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