Improving the Quality of Family Planning/Reproductive Health Programs in Indonesia
Improving the quality of health care is one of USAID’s highest priorities. As it looks ahead to graduation from U.S. assistance, Indonesia’s program has taken the steps necessary to ensure that “family planning services respect a client’s right to informed choice, a range of methods, and to the provision of quality clinical services,” said Lynn Adrian, Director of USAID/Indonesia’s Health Office.
The process of ensuring the provision of quality services involved four key steps: 1) establishing and disseminating standards; 2) assessing quality to determine if standards are being met; 3) targeting quality improvement efforts to specific gaps in quality; and 4) monitoring quality to ensure that national standards are maintained.
Indonesia’s national standards are the result of a year’s effort that involved reproductive health (RH) stakeholders, including professional organizations, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and others, to agree on the family planning (FP) guidelines that would establish the first-ever standards guiding FP and health care delivery in the country. Concurrently, the World Health Organization designed state-of-the-art, FP counseling flip charts that were quickly incorporated into the national standards, and the Ministry of Health (MOH) endorsed the translation of JHPIEGO’s Infection Prevention Standards for Health Facilities in Low Resource Settings.
Baseline research, conducted by The University of Indonesia and Faculty of Public Health/FKM in collaboration with BKKBN and the MOH, with technical assistance from Sustaining Technical Achievements in Reproductive Health/Family Planning (STARH), determined the success of FP services in select community health centers. An FP methodology to assess the changes over time in skills, practices, and physical resources was created, providing a clear guide for improvements.
The result? The national guidelines were widely distributed; clinical training modules were updated; contraceptive technology, infection prevention and counseling were made available; and on-site training and mentoring was provided. Media campaigns and information, education, and communication materials were distributed to tell clients about informed choice and to educate them about the kind of health care they can and should expect.
Learn more about how this combination of efforts – targeting supply, demand, and policy change – works to improve quality. Link to PDF for Fifth Edition of Partnership in FP/RH, Building a Culture of Quality in FP/RH Services.
Read more on USAID’s family planning work in Indonesia
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