Monitoring COVID-19’s Effects on Family Planning: What Should We Measure?
By Anita Raj, Jay Silverman, Rebecka Lundgren, Nandita Bhan, and Meredith Pierce
May 4, 2020
This blog originally appeared on Knowledge Success
The rapid growth of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised global awareness of inadequacies in our public health systems across high-, middle-, and low-income nations. As health care systems are stretched to capacity dealing with the pandemic, many of us are worried that delivery of essential health services—including family planning—is being severely compromised. Earlier this month, Marie Stopes International reported that up to 9.5 million women and girls may not get vital family planning services this year because of COVID-19, due to issues both in supply and demand, resulting in tens of thousands of maternal deaths. On the supply side, there are worries that reduced manufacturing and delivery may affect contraceptive access, and inadequate health care availability due to COVID-19 burdens on health systems may impede access to more effective contraceptives such as IUD and tubal ligation. Still, on the supply side, we may be able to monitor availability of family counselors and contraceptives to meet needs. But what of the demand side? How can we monitor shifts in women’s family planning needs and preferences in light of the social and economic shocks they are facing due to the pandemic?




