Welcome to the USAID-funded Health Policy Plus (HP+) project website.
Links to documents and external sites open in a new window.
Links to documents and external sites open in a new window.
A new journal article published in Global Health: Science and Practice examines the intersection of universal health coverage (UHC) and family planning efforts to understand to what extent selected countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have been successful in integrating family planning services and UHC-oriented schemes. Adopting a family planning lens, the Health Policy Plus authors examine access along the three dimensions of UHC: coverage, range of services (i.e., contraceptive methods), and financial protection. In addition to identifying barriers to access, this analysis takes a first step toward understanding the causal relationship between insurance coverage and family planning access.
In recent decades many Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries have lowered fertility rates and increased contraceptive prevalence. This progress is due in part to broad social reforms, including the adoption of universal health coverage (UHC) policies. To extract lessons for countries—both within LAC and beyond—who are in the early stages of implementing UHC programs, USAID through the Health Policy Plus project examined the interplay between UHC and family planning (FP) in nine countries. They found that, while LAC’s progress in moving toward UHC and expanding FP access has been positive, systematic inequalities persist. Most social health insurance schemes cover FP, but method choice is not always guaranteed and there are disparities in access and coverage between ethnic, geographical, and wealth groups. The briefs are available for download from the HP+ website.