The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently increased their funding to Georgetown’s Institute for Reproductive Health by $15 million, from $27.7 million to $42.7 million.
The increased grant money from USAID, which has provided funding to the institute since it’s inception in 1985, will allow it to double the number of countries in which it works – from 10 to 20 – including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Azerbaijan and Ethiopia. The institute will also work closely with the agency’s technical bureaus in Washington.
“The funding we recently received is in addition to the funds we have gotten from USAID over the past 13 years. It will essentially help us extend our efforts in critical countries in Africa, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Latin America,” Victoria Jennings, director of the institute, said. “With these funds, we will be able to take the Standard Days Method from `research to practice,’ ensuring that it is available as a family planning option to couples around the world.”
The Standard Days Method (SDM) was developed by the institute in 2002, and is the only natural method of family planning that has been clinically tested and introduced on an international scale in more than 20 years.
In developing the method, the institute first used data from the World Health Organization to determine the probability of pregnancy based on a fixed fertile window. After favorable results from several small-scale pilot studies, the institute implemented a full-scale efficacy trial on the SDM including nearly 500 women from Bolivia, Peru and the Philippines.
The clinical trial for the SDM revealed a first-year pregnancy rate of 4.8 percent when the method was used correctly. These results suggested that the SDM’s effectiveness is similar to several other common methods of family planning.
“Excellent biomedical and operations research by IRH has led to the development and piloting of a new, scientific, very effective, natural family planning method,” Jennings said. “The success of the Standard Days Method . of family planning clinical trials has led to considerable increases in field support and demands for technical assistance and global leadership from public and private sector entities in developing countries for the incorporation of these methods into their programs.”
