IMPLEMENTING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AWARENESS - PROGRESS TO DATE

This paper describes the experience of various institutions in integra ting a reproductive health awareness (RHA) approach into different hea lth, school and community-based programs. RHA, an educational approach that evolved from the Institute's client empowerment approach to natu ral family planning and fertility awareness, is based on helping women and men to participate actively in their own family planning and repr oductive health care by developing skills in self-observation, communi cation and self-advocacy. In addition to providing the Institute with an avenue for responding to the Cairo and Beijing mandates, RHA has al so provided a means to introduce family planning, particularly natural methods of family planning, into programs and institutions. RHA has c ontinued to evolve and strengthen during the process of held testing i ts contributions to existing reproductive health programs.