The Coalition's Strategic Plan explicitly acknowledges the right of individuals to choose the supplies they need to satisfy their evolving reproductive health needs, making available technologies that meet users’ needs and have desirable effects on reproductive health, but are not yet well integrated into the public or commercial sectors globally. To address these issues, the MDAWG will be working closely with the Coalition’s Caucus on New and Underused RH Technologies to facilitate the availability of new and underused methods. The Caucus aims to improve choice of reproductive health technologies and contribute to country level efforts towards achieving universal access to RH services and products.

The Caucus focuses on a number of technologies considered new and underused by the Coalition, including: contraceptive implants, CycleBeads, diaphragms, emergency contraception, female condoms, HPV vaccines, the levonorgestrel intrauterine system, manual vacuum aspirators, medical abortion, and the progestin-only vaginal ring. For more details about these technologies, please see the individual Product Briefs prepared by the Caucus.  

Members of MDAWG and the Caucus will work closely together to identify activities that will achieve the objectives of this work stream, and ultimately aid overall market growth.

Objective: The Market Development Approaches Working Group, in collaboration with the Caucus on New and Underused RH Technologies, will help integrate new and underused products into markets and facilitate the availability of products at the country level.

This workstream is continuing to develop its specific action plan; at this point current activities include:

• Serving as a forum for discussions regarding the development of different female condom products and to help build consensus, exchange information, and identify roles and responsibilities for coordination and collaboration with a view to increasing the availability of female condom products. Together with the Caucus, the MDA WG hopes to work with the key partners in the female condom community to lead the way in providing support for the development of a business plan to expand the availability of female condoms. A core group of meeting participants from WHO, UNFPA, UAFC, PATH, and MDA WG are currently outlining activities and next steps.
• Serving as a forum for discussions regarding how to address market issues for emergency contraception. This activity will be carried out by the MDA WG, in collaboration with the Caucus, and MDA member International Consortium for Emergency Contraception. Details are being defined, but initial ideas are to assist in further developing the public sector market for EC or working on issues of quality and preventing counterfeit EC products.