Family planning commodity financing by source

Family planning commodity financing by source

Family planning commodity financing by source

Definition:

The family planning (FP) commodity financing of a country, by funding source. FP commodities are methods of contraception that must be purchased, such as oral contraceptive pills, implants, injectables, patches, intrauterine devices, etc.

There are typically three sources for FP commodity financing: i.) government expenditures (includes internal and other government funding), ii.) international donor contributions (includes the United States Agency for International Development [USAID], the United Nations, Global Fund, other bilateral donors, or other international donor sources), and iii.) out-of-pocket consumer spending for commodities purchased in the private sector; service fees in the public sector; private sector prepayment schemes, including private health insurance, government-sponsored health insurance (including social health insurance and community-based health insurance), and national donors.

This indicator is usually expressed as a percent:

  • (FP commodity financing by domestic government expenditures/Total FP commodity financing) x 100
  • (FP commodity financing by international donor contributions/Total FP commodity financing) x 100
  • (FP commodity financing by out-of-pocket consumer spending/Total FP commodity financing) x 100

The FP Financing Roadmap, which was discontinued in July 2024, expressed this indicator as a percent of two sources: domestic and external.

Data Requirements:

Total FP commodity financing for a country; amount of FP commodity financing coming from various sources: domestic government expenditures, international donor support, and out-of-pocket consumer spending

Data Sources:

Data for this indicator are obtained either directly from a country’s government, UNFPA’s Family Planning Expenditures Tracking surveys (administered by Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute [NIDI]), the World Health Organization’s System of Health Accounts country reports, Track20’s Family Planning Spending Assessment (FPSA), or the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), which collects and analyzes donor government funding for FP. Note that there may be a lag in publishing financing data by each of these data sources.

Indicator Type:

Percent

Purpose:

This indicator is a subset of the indicator, Overall FP financing by source. It helps create a snapshot of a country’s financing environment for FP commodities. As the demand for FP supplies and services increases globally, the total amount of funding needed for contraceptives will also increase (Gribble, 2010). Donor funding for FP has been decreasing since 2019 (FP2030), and although national governments are taking on increasing responsibility for FP commodities, out-of-pocket spending on FP commodities is still disproportionately high in some countries. These out-of-pocket expenditures place a financial burden on the poor, in particular, and may pose a financial barrier to FP access (HIPs, 2018). Tracking this indicator can help assess if there is an overreliance on FP financing for commodities in one area and where adjustments could be made.

Issues:

In countries that provide FP commodities along with other reproductive health, maternal and child health, or primary health care services, evaluators may have trouble identifying government financing for FP specifically, or FP commodities even more precisely. Likewise, it is difficult to disaggregate bilateral FP funding from broader population, reproductive and maternal health totals, and the two are sometimes represented as integrated totals. In addition, FP-related activities funded in the context of other official development assistance sectors (e.g., humanitarian assistance, education, civil society) have remained largely unidentified. Therefore, it may be problematic to identify such cross-sectoral FP-specific funding (FP2030).

Related content:

Total Market Approach

 

References:

Gribble J, 2010. “Financing Contraceptives: A New Funding Environment”. Population Reference Bureau. https://www.prb.org/resources/toolkit-financing-contraceptives-a-new-funding-environment/

FP2030. https://progress.fp2030.org/finance/. Accessed July 2024.

High Impact Practices in Family Planning (HIPs). Domestic public financing: Building a sustainable future for family planning programs. Washington, DC: USAID; 2018 Apr. Available from: https://www.fphighimpactpractices.org/briefs/domestic-public-financing/