Woman-Centered Abortion Care

Community Linkages

Purpose
This module covers the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for creating linkages with communities to improve the provision of safe abortion care and other reproductive-health services for women.

Community Linkages

Objectives
By the end of this module, learners should be able to: 1. Describe the importance and means of creating linkages with community members. 2. Understand the need for building partnerships and coalitions with community members and leaders to strengthen reproductive health-care knowledge and services.
Community Linkages

Objectives (cont.)
4. Create a Community Map and Profile of reproductive-health services as part of a community assessment. 5. Utilize an Action Plan worksheet to address a community health issue. 6. Describe relevant programmatic strategies for working with communities.

Community Linkages

Importance of Community Involvement & Linkages

Helps service providers understand the context in which women and their families live. Uncovers community attitudes and perceptions regarding abortion and high quality health services. Determines the extent of community awareness regarding unplanned pregnancy, unsafe abortion, contraception and available health services. Gets communities working together to change policies to protect women's sexual & reproductive health & rights.
Community Linkages

Importance of Community Involvement & Linkages

Identifies exiting barriers to abortion services and follow up care Builds trust between providers and community members. Helps health care providers understand the opportunities and constraints faced when offering abortion services in the community . Helps identify community opposition to abortion and ways to reduce it.

Community Linkages

Importance of Community Involvement & Linkages

Helps to identify allies who can help promote access to reproductive health services. Aids in proactively identifying problems and developing solutions Identifies reasons behind unwanted pregnancies and ways to decrease it. Strengthens early identification of abortion complications. Identifies sources of unsafe abortions services and ways to eradicate them
Community Linkages

The Community Map Should Include

Hospitals, clinics and health posts, including the following:
Reproductive-health services

Emergency obstetric services (e.g. blood, surgery)

Community Linkages

The Community Map Should Include

(cont.) Places where people receive:
Health-related information, specifically about pregnancy prevention and termination (e.g. schools, government, womens groups, churches)
Contraception (e.g. pharmacies) Reproductive-health technologies such as manual vacuum aspiration (MVA)

Transportation for emergency care

Community Linkages

The Community Map Should Include

(cont.) Traditional healers in the community (if known) Non-health care community organizations that deal with sexual and reproductive health and rights (e.g. womens groups, youth groups) Markets, parks and other public gathering places

Community Linkages

Meet Community Leaders

Community Linkages

Community Dialogue

Community Linkages

Case Study
A hospital administrator and three key reproductive-health providers recently held a community forum to elicit community members perspectives on abortion. During this forum, they found out that there is a man posing as a doctor who offers low-cost, unsafe abortion procedures in the southern part of town. One poor woman in the community died as a result of an abortion he performed. She did not know he wasnt a trained doctor.
Community Linkages

Community Linkages

Illustrations by Stephen C. Edgerton