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Increasing Access to Family Planning

Many women who want to use family planning cannot access the methods; an extreme and serious shortage of highly skilled medical professionals - so-called "brain drain” - is causing a severe human resources problem.1 Providers able to prescribe oral contraceptives, skilled enough to administer injectable contraceptives, insert implants or IUDs or perform sterilization are in short supply in rural areas.  But the answer is as simple as broadening the scope of what existing nurses, community health volunteers and other heathcare agents are capable of doing - today - while building up the highly skilled workforce of tomorrow.

Task shifting is defined as “the rational redistribution of tasks among health workforce teams. Specific tasks are moved, where appropriate, from highly qualified health workers to health workers with shorter training and fewer qualifications in order to make more efficient use of the available human resources for health.” 2

 A description of tasks that can shift from more to less trained individuals
task shifting diagram

VSI has been promoting the task shifting model in our work since our inception: demonstrating that lower level providers -or the woman herself - can administer misoprostol to manage postpartum hemorrhage and that rural community health volunteers can administer injectable contraceptives in Ethiopia.  VSI works to demonstrate the feasibility of the task shifting model and to ensure research informs national policies enabling its wide-scale adoption.


1 Clemens, MA, Pettersson, G. 2008. New Data on African health professionals abroad. Human Resources for Health 6: 1.

2 World Health Organization. 2008. Task shifting: Rational Redistribution of Among Health Workforce Teams: Global Recommendations and Guidelines, 81.