For families across the world, the ability to decide whether to have children, when to have children, and how many children to have is strongly linked to economic, mental and physical well-being. Yet despite recent advances in the availability of family planning and reproductive health (FPRH) services, many developing countries are affected by low uptake of these services, high rates of contraceptive discontinuation, unplanned pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and high infant and maternal mortality.

The great potential for social impact in this space makes ideas42 especially pleased to announce the launch of a new project, Behavioral Economics for Innovations in Family Planning and Reproductive Health, made possible thanks to the generous support of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Through this project, we will use our expertise to address behavioral challenges in FPRH.

This project will be starting in the coming months. Our first two activities will be the release of our “request for problems” (RFP) in early March and a summit on March 14th. The RFP, to be released a week prior to the summit, will ask for applications from organizations interested in partnering with ideas42 on a FPRH project. The summit will be a daylong event where we introduce participants to our approach and lead participants through group activities on applying behavioral economics to FRPH. Interested organizations should plan to attend the summit and consider submitting an application to our request for problems.

You can also take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions for more information. If you have any other questions or would like to indicate your interest in participating in this project, please contact Hannah Spring at hannah@ideas42.org.