Strengthening Partnership with Faith Actors in Family Planning: A Strategic Planning Guide

"[M]any faith actors are willing and open to working on family planning. Finding entry points where they exist for engagement and collaboration is crucial to ensure better health outcomes."

Faith actors, whether faith/religious leaders (e.g., pastors, imams) or faith-based organisations (FBOs), are diverse in their approaches to family planning, ranging from supportive, to hesitant, to oppositional, depending on actor, context, and family planning method. From the High Impact Practices in Family Planning (HIPs) Partnership, this guide leads programme planners and decision-makers through a strategic process to engage and strengthen partnership with various faith actors in family planning. It also includes links to various examples and resources that can be brought to bear on this work.

Developed through consultation with technical experts, the guide outlines key actions for enabling a variety of stakeholders to engage in a joint effort to identify and develop approaches to collaborate more effectively, openly, and transparently on family planning, as best fits each partnership's context. The actions include:

1. Know which faith actors are working in family planning in your geographic context: Conduct an inventory and faith actor assessment that involves engaging in conversations with key faith actor stakeholders to understand the role of faith in the context of their communities and their priorities. These conversations also assist in promoting strong relationships among faith and secular actors for the long term. Within this action, it is key to also spend time on meeting design and dialogue methodology appropriate for the context in order to address issues of divisions and existing or non-existing trust and collaboration. As needed, further assessment of what the literature says on the following topics may also be helpful: (a) the role faith - and its complex interaction with culture, science, and gender - plays in people's lives and related to family planning; (b) how faith leaders of different faith traditions influence health beliefs and demand for health services, including contraceptive services; and (c) the role of faith actors in shaping and shifting mindsets and attitudes among community members.
2. Determine how faith actors can more effectively contribute to family planning policymaking and programming. In addition to dialogue among a range of faith and secular stakeholders, support faith actors to lead dialogues with each other to discuss questions and concerns, build scriptural and technical knowledge on family planning, and address knowledge and technical gaps. To address the issue of faith actors' voices being muted, treat faith actors, who have voices distinct from secular civil society, as equal partners in the process.
3. Identify capacity and resource needs of faith actors to more fully participate in family planning programmes. For example, plan to engage faith actor champions in media/social and behaviour change campaigns to discuss family planning publicly.
4. Develop an action plan to strengthen inclusion of faith actors in family planning and a mechanism to monitor the plan. For example, the plan may include components related to: public-FBO partnerships; strengthening relationships between secular and FBOs; plans for clearly defined FBO representation in planning and coordination mechanisms (e.g., family planning technical working groups); joint activities (e.g., addressing norms such as age at marriage and women's empowerment); and resource mobilisation. As part of the plan, encourage efforts to integrate FBOs into the national health information system so that their family planning services are captured in national service statistics.

Editor's note, January 4 2024: Click here to access materials (video - also below - PPT slides, etc.) from a December 12 2023 webinar on this HIP guide.