Bloomberg School Receives $18 Million to Sustain and Expand Family Planning Advocacy Efforts

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has received an $18 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to sustain and expand the Advance Family Planning (AFP) initiative. The grant will strengthen AFP’s advocacy efforts to make quality, voluntary family planning more accessible for women and girls around the world.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the lead coordinating partner for AFP, which comprises more than 20 organizations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

The new funds will supplement advocacy efforts within nine countries (Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda) and will support expansion into one additional country, Bangladesh. It brings total funding to $46 million and extends the initiative through 2018.

An estimated 225 million women—mostly from the world’s poorest countries—want to avoid pregnancy but are not using an effective contraceptive method. In 2012, the global community committed to expanding family planning access to an additional 120 million women and girls by 2020, launching the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) partnership.

AFP works to achieve this goal by engaging governments and other partners to increase financial investment in and political commitment to better access to and use of family planning information, services and supplies.

“Thanks to the hard work of our partners, AFP’s advocacy has increased the national and subnational commitment to family planning across Africa and Asia,” said Duff Gillespie, AFP’s Principal Investigator. “This generous supplement will enable us to accelerate our efforts in achieving the FP2020 goal.”

Based in the Population, Family and Reproductive Health Department of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health conducts and facilitates cutting-edge research and translates science into evidence-informed policies, programs and practice. The Institute works as an innovator, partner, advocate and convener to bridge the gap between knowledge and implementation and promote access to universal reproductive health and family planning for all.

# # #

Media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Sarah Whitmarsh at 443-287-2754 and swhitmarsh@jhu.edu and Stephanie Desmon at 410-955-7619 or sdesmon1@jhu.edu.