Preventing Unintended Pregnancy, HIV, and STDs

Contraceptives and Family Planning

Since 1994, CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health (DRH) has provided assistance to the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop and update WHO’s authoritative contraceptive guidelines for family planning providers. CDC monitors, assesses, and synthesizes new research on contraceptive safety and efficacy. WHO uses this information to update their guidelines, the Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use and the Selected Practice Recommendations for Contraceptive Use. CDC has adapted these guidelines for use in the United States.

Every family planning program must have a good supply of contraceptives on hand at all times. To help countries and programs calculate the quantity of contraceptives they need, CDC has developed the CastCost (Contraceptive Forecast and Cost Estimate) tool. This user-friendly spreadsheet uses data from Reproductive Health Surveys (or Demographic and Health Surveys) to estimate the quantity and cost of contraceptives that will be needed in a country or by a family planning service provider for each of the next five years. The CastCost tool is available in both English and Spanish. Read about our past work in Contraceptive Logistics.

Preventing the Transmission of Sexually Transmitted Infections, Including HIV

• Preventing Maternal to Child Transmission (PMTCT) is an HIV prevention approach with four components:
  • Preventing primary HIV infection among women of childbearing age.
  • Preventing unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV.
  • Preventing HIV transmission from a woman living with HIV to her infant during pregnancy, labor, delivery or breastfeeding.
  • Providing appropriate treatment, care and support to mothers living with HIV and their children and families.
• DRH is engaged in several PMTCT activities:
  • Integration of family planning and PMTCT in Ethiopia, Russia, and Ukraine.
  • Tenofovir in Pregnancy (TIP) study.
  • Breastfeeding, Antivirals, and Nutrition (BAN) study.
• The MARCH (Modeling and Reinforcement to Combat HIV/AIDS) strategy is an innovative behavior chance communication strategy. It was developed for low-resource settings to promote behaviors that reduce the risk of HIV infection, promote service use and create normative environments that sustain these changes through two key program components: role modeling in long-running radio serial dramas and reinforcement activities at the community level. The strategy has been used in several African countries, including Botswana, Zambia and Ethiopia.
• Accessing Counseling Message Effectiveness (ACME) Study—The ACME Study aims to develop effective counseling to help women avoid unprotected sexual activity while being treated for an STD and potentially help curb STD transmission.