A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 1, Issue 1 Spring/Summer 2000
COLOMBIA
PROMFAMILIA-INCORPORATING SEXUAL HEALTH SERVICES INTO A NATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAM
Founded in 1965, Profamilia, Colombia's largest family planning organization, made the transition during the 1990s from providing mainly family planning services to providing quality, comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services to women, men and youth throughout the country. With 35 clinics in 31 cities, Profamilia played a pivotal role in the demographic transition Colombia underwent from 1965 to 1995, when the fertility rate went from 7.0 to 2.8.
While integrating sexual health and rights in service settings is challenging for many providers all over the world, Profamilia has met this challenge through a holistic, innovative approach to integrating sexuality and sexual health into family planning services. Profamilia utilizes a rights, gender and sexual health approach to providing services and counseling. A critical factor in success is the central importance placed on counselor training. Counselors provide orientation to new clients, as well as provide community education. Viewing counselors and staff as "internal clients" needing training and education as well as "external clients", Profamilia looks to counselors as a cornerstone in the effort to integrate gender, rights and sexuality issues with family planning services.
Counselors are trained extensively and comprehensively in gender, sexual health and rights. A critical component of the training requires that counselors reflect personally on issues of their own sexuality, challenging their own values, biases, and knowledge. The initial training workshop resulted in the development of a training manual, "How to Incorporate Sexual and Reproductive Health in Family Planning Services and Programs with a Gender Perspective." The manual includes 30 standard protocols for counseling sexual and reproductive health in a service environment. Not only are counselors trained in sexuality and sexual health, but also at larger clinics, all levels of staff from receptionists and security guards to nurses receive training.
Whereas discussions of sexuality and sexual health and rights were challenging prior to training, counselors now routinely broach topics related to sexuality, self-esteem, violence, mutual respect, and rights and are better equipped to assist clients with their sexual and reproductive health needs and concerns.
From: Shepard, Bonnie. "When I talk about sexuality, I include myself": Incorporating Sexual Health Services into a National Family Planning Program in Colombia. UNPUBLISHED DRAFT. David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, 61 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.
For more information on Profamilia's training model, contact:
Profamilia
Calle 34 No. 14-52
Santafé de Bogotá D.C.
Phone: (571) 287-2100 / 245-7552
Fax: (571) 338-3159
Ana Cristina Gonzalez: email: genero@profamilia.org.co
Web Master: siecus@siecus.org