Ensuring reproductive health (RH) supplies, when every man and woman, regardless of age, can exercise his or her rights to choose, obtain, and use high-quality, affordable RH products, is a significant challenge.
In a world of limited resources, competing health needs, and more youth entering their reproductive years, decision-makers need to understand the RH supplies issue. They must be persuaded that it is pressing and, most important, know what effective policy actions they can take to address the problem.
A. Why Advocacy?
Advocacy is always directed at decisionmakers with the aim of influencing or changing policy, laws, regulations, programs, or the allocation of resources. For instance, in Guatemala, RH advocates influenced the process of instituting a tax on alcohol and tobacco, which is used in part for purchasing contraceptives.
What is advocacy?
Advocacy is a set of targeted actions directed at decisionmakers in support of a specific policy issue. Effective advocacy is strategic, targeted, well designed, and firmly supported by reliable data. To provide decisionmakers with a clear roadmap for action, advocacy moves beyond awareness raising. It identifies the issue requiring attention and proposes a specific, actionable solution.
