Toolkit for Improving Family Planning Services in School Settings

Access to high-quality and comprehensive family planning services helps promote adolescent sexual and reproductive health. However, youth—especially those who are historically excluded or who live in resource-limited areas—face challenges in accessing services, including lack of awareness about those services, fears about confidentiality, or lack of adolescent-friendly or culturally sensitive practices in clinics. One promising approach to meeting youth’s needs is to provide family planning services in school-based settings, where youth spend most of their time.  

This toolkit has two sections to support family planning providers and administrators in designing and delivering high-quality family planning care and programming to youth in school-based settings: 

Foundational Approaches for Providing Family Planning to Adolescents:

Describes four approaches that are integral to providing effective family planning care to youth. Each foundational approach includes real-life examples based on interviews with providers, along with useful resources to help readers integrate these approaches into their own work. 

Case Studies on Innovative Family Planning Service Delivery Strategies:

Explores four programs and clinics across the United States that are using innovative approaches to improve family planning service delivery in school-based settings. Each case study describes a program in-depth and includes recommendations and resources for readers interested in implementing a similar approach(es) in their own setting.

Innovative practices for providing sexual health education and services in schools

This webinar featured presentations by four organizations, including school-based health centers: Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Minneapolis Health Department, La Clínica de la Raza, and AccessMatters. Representatives from each organization shared four unique strategies for providing sexual health education and family planning services to young people in schools, including how the strategies work, why they were developed, challenges or barriers to their implementation, and tips for sustainability. This webinar was hosted by Child Trends and was held on February 16, 2023.

Related presentation: Innovative Practices for Providing Sexual Health Education and Services in Schools, February 16, 2023