Giving Compass' Take:

• Nancy Schoenfeld covers a DC initiative that assesses communities wants and needs around contraceptive care and defines its success on community satisfaction.

• How can community engagement be included in your giving?

• Read about the changing landscape for community-based nonprofits.


Let me explain!  Our DC initiative has decided to learn more about what DC residents want and need with respect to their reproductive health and to define success around how we can contribute to adapting health care service delivery to meet those needs.

Through the needs assessment, we learned that reproductive health services and contraceptive methods actually already are widely available in DC; however, there is a disconnect between the availability/accessibility of these services and the utilization of them.  We also learned that a significant number of sexually active adolescents and young women in DC are not accessing health care services at all.  Additionally, the results showed low knowledge levels, negative perceptions, suspicions, mistrust and safety concerns about birth control methods (especially LARC methods) – particularly among young women of color from low-income households.

As a result of the DC needs assessment findings, our reproductive health/racial equity research, and recognition of how historical injustices and resulting mistrust may affect reproductive health care decision making, we believe that:

  • method-effectiveness is not necessarily the main priority in all patient’s decision-making regarding contraception;
  • some patients do not want LARC methods for a variety of reasons;
  • access barriers are not necessarily as simple as method availability and having enough clinicians trained to provide them; and
  • unintended pregnancy is not universally viewed as a problem that needs to be prevented.

We also believe that the community the DC initiative is intended to serve should guide the identification of the problem(s) to be addressed, as well as the potential solutions that best fit the needs of the community.  Thus, we are focusing on whether people are able to access the services they need and want, and whether they experience those services positively, and ultimately whether their reproductive quality of life improves.

Read the full article about prioritizing equity and community in contraceptive access work by Nancy Schoenfeld at The Women's Foundation.