What did our FP/RH Senior Technical Advisor at USAID mean when she exclaimed, “FP is making a COMEBACK!” in a recent email? Well, in the international public health scene, topics and diseases fall in and out of fashion. Just like UGG boots. Or sideswept bangs. Certain topics (can anyone say HIV/AIDS?) hog all of the spotlight, leaving less sexy topics (e.g. sleeping sickness, and to a certain extent malaria) in the shadows. Sexy topics get huge bucks for programming and research, attract hoards of public health and medical professionals to fancy conferences, and often (even) have a celebrity face publicizing the issue.

Over the past couple of years, family planning (FP) has lost some of its sex appeal. It hasn’t become totally neglected, but there has been less funding available and has had less attention devoted to it.

But lately, FP has been on its way back up, and this makes those of us working in FP/RH very excited! We are seeing evidence of the upswing from Kampala. For one thing, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (my alma mater) are organizing an international conference on FP right here in Kampala. It’s going to be a big deal, with lots of big wigs at it, and lots of interesting experiences shared. Sadly, it’s going to take place after I head back to the States to start med school, but I’m still working on preparing some abstracts to submit for conference presentations/posters.

Family planning was also the cover story of this month’s glossy African Woman magazine. I dutifully picked up a copy. While I was happy to see FP featured so prominently in this magazine--which targets mid-upper class, modern African women across East Africa--I found the articles to be a bit blasé. Oh well.

Perhaps Obama has ushered in some of this FP attention during the first months of his presidency. He revoked of the Mexico City Policy (which banned USG funding for international FP groups that provide abortion) and pledged to “initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.”

Speaking of America, I recently read an article that said as the economic downturn has sunken in, vasectomy rates in the US have increased. Now, if only we could spread this pattern of thinking, so that people viewed family planning as making financial sense. “Plan a small, manageable family for a better future” is the current FP-speak in Uganda. This campaign was spearheaded by HCP during my internship days, and is still ongoing, with billboards and posters all over the country trying to make this case. “Fred” and “Bernard,” the poster boys of this campaign, model two different sets of family planning behaviors. The take-home message? Bernard is an FP user, and he has the extra spending money, healthful meals, and fancy wheels to prove it!
(What I love, is that I actually here people making Fred and Bernard references in towns across Uganda. When someone’s too broke to accept a let’s-grab-lunch invitation, they might say, “You go for Bernard’s lunch. But me, I’m having Fred’s lunch today.”)