Vasectomy Advocacy Materials to Improve Method Choice in Family Planning

Written by: Olivia Carlson, Program Officer

Access to vasectomy is critical to ensuring wide method choice and promoting gender equity by allowing men to share responsibility for contraception. Vasectomy is safe, effective, and offers several benefits for those who do not want to have any or more children. Nevertheless, vasectomy is rarely included in family planning programs and is therefore widely inaccessible and underutilized.

Breakthrough ACTION has developed a package of materials to support advocacy for the inclusion of vasectomy in family planning programs with key stakeholders in government, coordinating bodies, and donor organizations. The materials are informed by existing global survey data and reports, peer-reviewed articles, grey literature, and interviews with key individuals in the family planning and reproductive health community who have worked on vasectomy initiatives.

Underfunded and Underutilized: An Argument for Vasectomy Advocacy to Improve Method Choice demonstrates that now is the time to put vasectomy on the agendas of key decision makers in family planning and reproductive health, proposes several goals for advocates’ consideration, and includes detailed resources advocates can use to achieve these goals.

Vasectomy Message Framework: A Tool to Help Advocates Prepare for Conversations with Key Stakeholders helps advocates make the case for vasectomy with key stakeholders in government, donor organizations, and coordinating bodies. It includes concrete talking points, supporting evidence, and guidance for selecting the key message most likely to influence a particular stakeholder.

After developing a tailored message framework, advocates can use the suite of presentation materials available within Breakthrough ACTION’s new web tool, Engaging Men as Contraceptive Users: Web-Based Presentation Materials for Vasectomy Advocates, to convey their key message while advocating with a particular stakeholder.