A Tool to Measure the Gender Competency of Family Planning Providers: Insights from Provider Experience in Ghana Watch Now On December 12, 2023, D4I hosted the webinar, “A Tool to Measure the Gender Competency of Family Planning Providers: Insights from Provider Experience in Ghana.” Every day, family planning providers are faced with gender-related issues that complicate their clients’ family planning decisions. These challenges can take many forms, from inequities in decision making power between men and women to limited skills in couples’ communication, lack of male engagement, and experiences of gender-based violence. Providers’ beliefs and attitudes about appropriate gender roles and behavior for women, men, girls, and boys can also influence service provision. By gaining skills in gender competency, providers can better identify gender-related issues faced by their clients and help them navigate these issues to reach their family planning goals. During this webinar, D4I presented a new self-assessment tool designed to measure gender competency among family planning providers and shared insights from providers in Ghana who used the tool. The webinar also highlighted the future use of the tool and an eLearning course and described how these resources can be used in training family planning providers in Ghana and other contexts. Watch the webinar recording and download the presentation slides. Speakers Katherine Andrinopoulos is an activity lead with D4I and an Associate Professor in the Department of International Health and Sustainable Development at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She has 20 years of experience in applied social science research related to sexual and reproductive health including family planning and HIV. Her work focuses on mitigating the impact of gender-related barriers and stigma on health outcomes. Janna Wisniewski is an activity lead with D4I and an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health and Sustainable Development at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her research on health system strengthening in fragile and post-conflict settings, and on the ways in which the health system contributes to health disparities. She has extensive experience in applied mixed-methods research related to health systems and service delivery in family planning. Evelyn Koko is a qualitative researcher with more than 27 years of hands-on market research experience. She has strategically led teams to undertake several qualitative studies in Ghana and in the West African region. She has collaborated with a number of local and international agencies (Grace Health International, eMBeD unit of The World Bank, UNAIDS, etc.) to conduct social behavior and health related studies over the years. Additional Resources: Blog: How Can We Strengthen Gender Competency in Reproductive Health Services? Webinar: Development of a tool to assess the gender competency of family planning providers
