Approach for Diagnosing Inequity in Family Planning Programs

Quality family planning information and services have not yet reached those with the greatest need. Part of the challenge in eliminating inequities is gaining an adequate understanding of who is affected, in what component of family planning, and where.

To support progress toward equitable healthcare, HP+ developed an approach for diagnosing inequity in family planning programs. This approach identifies inequities:

1.  For a diverse range of disadvantaged subgroups
2.  For various programmatic components of family planning
3. At national and subnational levels

Replicable across countries through HP+’s open source code, the approach enables users to easily transform demographic and health survey data to develop evidence for policy, financing, and programmatic decisions at national and subnational levels.

The methodology and replication guide below describes the approach and provides step-by-step instructions for running the code independently. Results from the application of the approach to Uganda can be found in the brief, Are Family Planning Programs Reaching the Disadvantaged? An Equity Case Study of Uganda. Country adaptations of the code for Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe were added in 2022.

This tool requires that users have downloaded and installed the R software environment and RStudio Desktop, both of which are free and enable statistical computations.

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