PROGRESS collaborated with many partners at the global technical leadership level, including the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Africa Bureau and the World Health Organization (WHO). Examples of the project’s activities are shown below:

• At the request of USAID’s Africa Bureau, FHI 360 worked with ministries of health and USAID Missions in Ethiopia and Rwanda, and EngenderHealth did the same in Malawi, to determine how these three countries have achieved the most rapid increases in contraceptive prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. FHI 360 then synthesized the information and lessons learned into this report [PDF, 629 KB] to help meet Millennium Development Goals in Africa.
• At the request of USAID’s Africa Bureau and USAID/Tanzania, PROGRESS provided technical and logistical leadership for a 2012 meeting on using mobile technology to improve family planning and health programs. The meeting report is available here [PDF, 1.1 MB].
• PROGRESS worked with WHO and USAID to host a 2009 technical consultation on community health workers providing injectable contraceptives. The consultation resulted in an article synthesizing the global evidence on this practice (abstract available here) and a technical report [PDF, 181 KB] that has contributed to subsequent policy changes and scale-up.
• PROGRESS has provided major support to WHO’s Implementing Best Practices Initiative, especially in synthesizing the initiative’s experience at two recent International Conferences on Family Planning. These syntheses are available from the conferences in Kampala, Uganda, in 2009 [PDF, 1.7 MB] and in Dakar, Senegal, in 2011 [PDF, 1.3 MB].
• PROGRESS staff serve on WHO’s review panel for family planning and reproductive health research awards. They also participate in various WHO technical consultations, including a 2012 consultation on task shifting in family planning. The resulting recommendations on task shifting are included in a WHO guidance document, available here.

PROGRESS (Program Research for Strengthening Services) was a five-year project awarded to FHI 360 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in June 2008. The project sought to improve access to family planning among underserved populations by providing global technical leadership and working in selected countries.