The Community-Based Family Planning Toolkit is a platform for sharing reliable and relevant information about community-based family planning programs (CBFP) and for strengthening the capacity of agencies and organizations to plan, implement, evaluate, promote, and scale up CBFP programs.

This Toolkit presents a collection of carefully selected resources for health policy makers, program managers, service providers, information officers, and others, and includes experience and tools from dozens of countries. Many items found in the CBFP Toolkit can be adapted or revised for use in specific country contexts and unique program circumstances.

Key sections in this toolkit include:

• CBFP Approaches
• Policy & Advocacy 
• Program Design & Management
• Training
• Monitoring & Evaluation
• Behavior Change Communication 
• Country Experiences

Why Community-Based Family Planning?

CBFP brings family planning (FP) information and contraceptive methods to women and men in the communities where they live using one or more approaches including provision by community health workers (CHWs), mobile outreach services, and drug shops and the private sector.

When appropriately designed and implemented, CBFP can increase use of contraception rates, particularly in scenarios when:

• Demand for FP is high but access to services is low
• Demand, access, and use of FP is low
• Demand for and use of FP is low—even though FP services are readily available
• The health infrastructure is weak     

CBFP programs implemented by the private sector or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should be linked to the government’s health system so as to not duplicate, replace, or ignore the system. A CBFP program must carefully choose the types of FP methods to be offered based on the ministry of health’s policy, community needs, and availability of methods via health facilities. If there is a gap between community needs and what is available, the CBFP program should consider how to fill this gap. CBFP programs need to ensure that quality FP services are available at the referral health facilities and relevant facility needs are addressed in their project plan or through partners’ plans.

To learn more about Community-Based Family Planning take the Global Health eLearning course (registration required).

For more information about Community-Based Access to Injectables, please visit the Community-Based Access to Injectable Contraceptives Toolkit.