Strengthening Social Acceptance of Family Planning in the Philippines: A Communication and Advocacy Project

This Annual Report documents the major accomplishments of The Strengthening the Social Acceptance of Family Planning in the Philippines Project (TSAP-FP) for the period October 1 2003 to September 30 2004, roughly coinciding with the second year of its project life. Launched by the Academy for Educational Development (AED), TSAP was a 4-year initiative designed to increase the social acceptance of family planning (FP) as part of a healthy lifestyle among the Filipino public. Through the individual yet integrated efforts of 3 major strategies - behaviour change communication (BCC), advocacy and social mobilisation (ASM), and health provider (HP) interventions - TSAP-FP worked to contribute to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)/Philippines' strategic objective of achieving desired family size and improved health sustainability.

Here is an excerpt from the report:

"On the BCC Strategies
The Assessment concluded that TSAP had mounted a number of highly promising and effective communications programs that are effectively getting positive and accurate messages to its targeted populations. Some of its higher visibility activities, including TV commercials, radio talk shows, its 'safety' slogan and associated song, are very impressive products...

On the ASM Strategies
The urban poor, informal sector, and the labor sector make up the bulk of the poor in urban areas. These groups can be reached through existing mass-based organizations that TSAP has partnered with. The decision to focus on males is long overdue considering the key role of men in a Filipino couple's decision to practice family planning. As with its other components, TSAP is breaking new ground in its approach to advocacy and social mobilization for family planning acceptance..."

On the Health Provider Strategies
TSAP's Health Provider component has introduced Evidence–Based Medicine for Family Planning (EBM-FP) in the Philippines. While EBM is used in many other aspects of medical and health training, this is an innovation in the Philippines. In general, EBM-FP and its associated Critically Assessed Topics (CATs) is providing the basis for greatly enhanced knowledge and understanding of family planning and contraceptive technologies, service skills upgrading, and confidence raising among family planning service providers. The first two years of TSAP has been a period building the human resource base needed to expand EBM-FP and CATS to front-line service providers..."

On ARMM
TSAP's work in the ARMM [Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao] has resulted in a landmark religious decree - the fatwa - that creates significant, new opportunities for generating greater acceptance of family planning, and modern methods in particular, among the Muslim communities of the Philippines. This is clearly TSAP's greatest success over the past two years. Now TSAP must have sufficient resources and additional time to build on this major accomplishment..."