An Abbreviated SPARHCS Assessment Guide
Assessing contraceptive security is a complicated undertaking. It requires asking questions about the population using or not using family planning (FP) methods, sources, and providers of contraceptive services and supplies, supply systems, coordination, the policy environment, leadership, and the broad socioeconomic and cultural context.
The SPARHCS approach includes a diagnostic guide organized along contraceptive security (CS) components that assists country stakeholders in assessing the current situation, identifying CS challenges, and defining priorities.
Contraceptive security committees and networks can use the information collected for the assessment to (1) create a comprehensive CS strategy to guide program development, financing, and implementation; and (2) select a critical issue and design an advocacy campaign around it.
A team of international and national experts or a team of local experts may undertake a SPARHCS assessment. In either case, the assessment requires the collection and analysis of information obtained from some or all of the following resources.
- Existing studies and reports such as Demographic and Health Surveys, Centers for Disease Control surveys, MOH reports and documents, FP studies, legal and regulatory analyses of the FP environment, the latest census, country projections of FP users (e.g., from POLICY’s FamPlan Model), contraceptive procurement tables, past and current data on contraceptive supplies from the RHI and other country or international information.
- Key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and field visits to supply chain points and service delivery sites.
- A participatory CS issues workshop to identify and analyze CS issues, with participants representing key stakeholder groups (public sector; NGOs; commercial sector; social marketing groups; and civil society groups representing women, the poor, and young people).
