Collaborate for women: Abortion and Contraception Care Together (C4W ACCT)

C4W ACCT aims to strengthen capacity and support for national uptake of competency-based education in family planning (FP) and comprehensive abortion care (CAC) across five countries in Africa and Asia. It also seeks to build inter-professional collaboration among OBGYNS, midwives and other key stakeholders to ensure sustainable improvements in women’s health. 

Purpose  

Ensuring that healthcare professionals receive competency-based education (CBE) is vital for delivering quality care and removing barriers to essential services. CBE, an outcomes-based approach to learning that situates knowledge and skills in the context of practice, is especially important for contraception and abortion care but is often inadequately covered or entirely missing from medical curricula. FIGO believes that pre-service education grounded in competency-based learning is critical to ensure the incoming generation of healthcare professionals have the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to provide these services safely and effectively. 

C4W ACCT is a collaboration between the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the UN’s Special Programme in Human Reproduction (HRP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), which aims to implement best practices in FP and CAC education and strengthen partnerships to enhance quality care and improving health outcomes. By engaging with national societies of obstetrics and gynaecology, midwives’ associations and other key stakeholders, this collaboration seeks to incorporate competency-based learning into national education programs. 

Integral to this collaboration is an emphasis on the provision of compassionate and gender-sensitive care for women and girls. Creating an enabling educational framework that supports inter-professional collaboration and ensures respectful care is the norm when providing FP & CAC services is crucial for advancing women’s healthcare and human rights.  

What we do  

Through C4W ACCT, and by working closely with ICM, WHO and HRP, FIGO will support our member societies in the five countries to: 

• Develop a strategy for the dissemination and implementation of the WHO Family planning and comprehensive abortion care toolkit for the primary health care workforce, ensuring alignment with other relevant frameworks and engaging key stakeholders (OBGYNs, midwives, ministries of health, educators, etc.) through inter-professional collaboration.
• Conduct assessments of FP and CAC competency pre-service education and performance gaps across the five countries.
• Develop learner-centred, competency-based curricula related to FP and CAC (with a focus on pre-service).
• Integrate and implement competency-based pre- and in-service education (with a focus on pre-service).
• Strengthen organisational structures to more effectively deliver C4W ACCT objectives, including through office management and human resources, governance and leadership, project and financial management, advocacy and communications, and partnerships and influencing.
• Strengthen interprofessional collaboration and workforce optimisation for increased access to FP and CAC services. 

Who we work with  

C4W ACCT is a collaboration between FIGO, ICM, WHO and HRP.  

Together, we are committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health, viewing inter-professional collaboration between OBGYNs, midwives and other health care providers as a key driver for success in increasing access to FP and CAC services for women and adolescent girls.  

WHO has created tools for the development and adoption of FP and CAC competencies, aimed at the primary health care workforce. FIGO’s member societies in the five countries will work closely alongside midwives’ associations, WHO country offices and other key stakeholders to lead on the implementation of these tools, developing context- specific strategies to implement FP and CAC competency-based education into pre-service and beyond.  

For this collaboration, FIGO and ICM are working with their respective member societies in:

Bangladesh:

• The Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of Bangladesh (OGSB)
• Bangladesh Midwifery Society (BMS)

Democratic Republic of Congo: 

• La Société Congolaise de Gynécologie et d'Obstétrique / the Congolese Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics (SCOGO)
• Société congolaise de la Pratique Sage-Femme (SCOSAF) 

Mozambique:

• The Association of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of Mozambique (AMOG)
• Associaçao de Parteiras De Moçambique

Nepal:

• The Nepal Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (NESOG)
• Midwifery Society of Nepal (MIDSON)

Sierra Leone:

• The Sierra Leone Association of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians (SLAGO)
• Sierra Leone Midwives’ Association (SLMA)

Find out more about ICM’s work. 

Contacts  

To contact FIGO’s C4W ACCT team to ask a question about their work or  to seek opportunities for collaboration, please click below. 

Senior Project Coordinator – Vedrana Koren ([email protected]) 

Project Manager – Jema Davis ([email protected])