School of Public Health to monitor family planning progress in developing nations

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been awarded a $15 million, five-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to implement a mobile device-based data collection system to monitor progress in family planning access and quality of care in some of the poorest countries in the world.

Known as Performance, Monitoring and Accountability 2020 (PMA2020), the project will track key indicators for contraceptive demand, supply, use, and quality of care in developing countries. The countries included participated in last year's London Summit on Family Planning. At the summit, $2.6 billion was committed by donors, and more than 20 developing countries made commitments to increase access to contraceptives for an estimated 120 million women and girls worldwide by 2020.

PMA2020 will be based at the Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins. Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia and India are among the countries expected to participate.

"This innovative work will use advanced information technologies to monitor performance," said Michael J. Klag, dean of the School of Public Health. "This new approach can increase the effectiveness of family planning care, and is applicable to a broad range of public health needs in low-resource settings, such as child immunization, nutrition and safe water."