Planning and Implementing an Essential Package of Sexual and Reproductive Health Services

The goal of this guidance document is to provide a framework for developing an essential sexual and reproductive health (SRH) package. It focuses on two priority areas: 1) integrating family planning into maternal and newborn care services, and 2) integrating services for preventing and managing sexually transmitted infections/reproductive tract infections into primary healthcare services.

This guidance document comprises three sections. The Introduction explains and justifies why the development and implementation of an essential SRH package should be planned and framed within the World Health Organization’s six Building Blocks of Health Systems.

The second section presents the “How To” steps and checklist tools for planning, implementing and scaling up, including specific examples for the two priority areas indicated above.

The third section provides the evidence-base supporting the recommendations and action-points proposed in each tool. This evidence-base includes key findings and summary recommendations from a literature review (in matrix format) and a bibliography of the references included in the literature review.