Effective programming in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a vital component of CARE's work to reduce poverty and social injustice.  Improving SRH and addressing the unmet need for family planning are central to CARE's commitment to poverty reduction and gender equity.  It is clear that improvements in SRH - and health in general - are linked to economic and social development and must be addressed to achieve sustainable reductions in poverty.  CARE is committed to improving access to and use of quality SRH information and services by poor and vulnerable people.  CARE is equally committed to addressing the underlying causes of poor SRH status.

Background

Women make up 70 percent of the world's poorest people. Many factors contribute to this fact, but one of the clear underlying causes is poor reproductive health among women. Without access to comprehensive reproductive health services, women are more likely to die in pregnancy and less likely to have healthy children. Addressing these issues is crucial to the fight against global poverty.

CARE's work with communities and partner organizations focuses primarily on specific areas of sexual and reproductive health:

• Family planning
• Maternal health
• Gender and sexuality

What Sets CARE Apart

Our sexual and reproductive health programs have changed with CARE's growing focus on human rights. CARE empowers communities to address the underlying causes of poor health:

• We confront fundamental issues of gender and sexuality that stand in the way of improving sexual and reproductive health
• We advocate for policy change to improve health systems and access to care
• We help marginalized groups such as young people, ethnic minorities, lower castes and sex workers speak out on issues that concern them
• We challenge traditions and practices that marginalize women and girls, including domestic violence, female genital cutting and forced marriage
• We integrate reproductive heath into our emergency and relief efforts

Examples of CARE's Work:

In Peru, CARE's FEMME project addressed an acute need for emergency obstetric care services for poor, indigenous women and their families in the country's rural highlands. Our rights-based approach included not only women, families and the community, but also health workers and policy-makers. As a result, the number of women who used emergency obstetric services more than doubled, survival rates improved dramatically and Peru's Ministry of Health introduced new standard guidelines and protocols in 2007 based largely on CARE's field experience.

In Bangladesh, CARE worked with local partner organizations to implement the Dinajpur Safe Motherhood Initiative, a program to improve maternal health through a combination of efforts at the community and health service delivery levels. As a result of the project, utilization of health services for obstetric care increased from 16 to 40 percent.

Engendering Change: A Short film on the Inner Spaces, Outer Faces Initiative

In India, between June 2007 and April 2009, CARE implemented a pilot study to test the hypothesis that integrating gender and sexuality into a maternal and neonatal health program could generate improved health outcomes. The pilot project, Inner Spaces Outer Faces Initiative (ISOFI), was implemented in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh. Shot in the villages of Barabanki district, this film traces some of the key conceptual and field interventions made during this project. It also examines the significant learnings and looks at the possibilities of future work in the area of health. Implemented by CARE and ICRW and funded by the Ford Foundation.