A Guide to Identifying and Documenting Best Practices in Family Planning Programme

The guide is based on two documents guiding the documentation of best practices, currently used in Africa: the WHO Regional Office for Africa Guide for documenting and sharing “best practices” in health programs (2008) and the Guide for documenting good practices (2015), developed by the West African Health Organization (WAHO), Implementing Best Practices (IBP) Initiative, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW).

The WHO Regional Office for Africa guide was developed to disseminate a series of country experiences on the planning, implementation, and monitoring of health programs and services that can be considered as “best practices.” the IBP Initiative partnered with WAHO to prepare and disseminate a “Good practices in public health” documentation tool to  support the WAHO Good Practices Forum and the documentation of best practices in the West Africa Region.

The introduction to the guide states that, "One of the significant barriers to knowledge-sharing and reapplication of experience is the limited culture of information and knowledge documentation and sharing. Although relevant knowledge may exist in people’s minds, it cannot always be tapped or it may exist in formats that limit people’s ability to know about it or find it. This underscores the need for decision-makers, health professionals, communities and WHO staff to be able to find, use and share knowledge on experiences of what works and lessons learned."

This guide outlines steps to identifying and documenting FP best practices.  It defines best practices, sets out criteria for determining what are best practices, and gives some examples of best practices in the field.

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