Reducing Discontinuation in Family Planning Programs

Anyone who has ever worked in a family planning program will be all too aware that efforts to attract and recruit new clients will be only partially successful if the program fails to keep those new clients. How can the universally troubling problem of discontinuers best be addressed by program managers?

This issue of The Family Planning Manager offers some practical suggestions on ways to measure and reduce the discontinuation rate in your clinic. It then describes how you can analyze the data that you have collected to find out both the characteristics of women who stop using contraception and why they have chosen to discontinue. It also examines the common factors associated with high levels of discontinuation, and explores changes managers can make in service delivery that can help to reduce the proportion of men and women who make an initial visit, or several visits to the clinic, but then don’t come back.