BACKGROUND
The global health community has mobilized around various initiatives to advance the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to improve the lives of women and children. The United Nations (UN) Every Woman Every Child strategy,1 Family Planning 2020 (FP2020),2 and most recently the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Thirteenth General Programme of Work 2019–2023 (GPW13)3 have all emphasized the need for regional- and country-level investments, collaboration, partnership, and accountability to move the agenda forward.
But what does strong collaboration and partnership really look like? The Implementing Best Practices (IBP) initiative is an example of a longtime partnership dedicated to supporting the dissemination and use of evidence-based family planning and reproductive health guidelines, tools, and practices.4 IBP was created in 1999 with support from WHO, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to “effectively exchange and transfer knowledge, information, expertise and experience in order to improve practice.”5 Through its WHO-based Secretariat and growing network of more than 60 member organizations, spanning global, regional, and local NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs), IBP has made significant efforts to bridge the gap between knowledge generated by the family planning community and the use of that knowledge to improve family planning and reproductive health outcomes. In addition, IBP has helped create a platform for field-based implementers to feedback local implementation experience and learning into the global discourse.
IBP has made significant efforts to bridge the gap between knowledge generation and knowledge use in family planning and reproductive health.
Over the past 15 years, …