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A Client-centered Approach to Family Planning: The Davao Project

The reproductive health approach to family planning shifts the focus of service provision from macro-level demographic objectives to meeting clients' needs. Little field experience exists to date, however, to indicate how to implement this approach. This study describes a field project in Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley provinces in the Philippines that implemented the reproductive health approach on a quasi-experimental basis. The intervention was designed to address clients' self-defined reproductive needs by providing them with relevant and accurate information and services of good quality. It consisted of two components: Providers were trained in information exchange at fixed clinics, and supervisors were trained in facilitative supervision. The results presented here indicate that the client-centered intervention was successful in enhancing service providers' knowledge and improving the content of information exchange between providers and clients. One provincial health officer has expanded the intervention throughout his province, while other provinces are interested in duplicating the model.