The Family Planning/Reproductive Health (FP/RH) Equity Working Group works to advance thought leadership, collaboration and foster peer-to-peer learning in the field of equity in FP/RH. The Working Group is intended to represent a diverse range of knowledge, experience, perspectives and countries. As such, membership is comprised of a multi-disciplinary group of implementers, researchers, donors, and community actors within the global public health and international development sectors. The Working Group is governed by a Steering Committee, and the R4S project serves as Secretariat. For a compilation of resources related to FP/RH equity, please click here.

FP/RH Equity Working Group membership is open to all.

Priorities of the FP/RH Equity Working Group include:

Develop consensus around, and advance and promote a mutual and universal understanding of, equity in FP/RH by establishing and sharing common definitions and measures.
Identify gaps in equity in the FP/RH knowledge base and seek to fill those gaps by facilitating knowledge sharing between organizations and governments, including Ministries of Health, and by synthesizing and broadly disseminating research, program evaluations, lessons learned, evidence-based approaches, and other tools and resources as they emerge.
Develop new resources and practical tools to guide the uptake of evidence-based approaches in both routine and non-standard data collection, to advance equity in FP/RH around the globe.

WORKING GROUP CHARTER

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Meet the Steering Committee

The Steering Committee serves as the leadership and oversight body of the FP/RH Equity Working Group.

Shiza Farid

Family Planning Data Analysis Advisor, Public Health Institute

Shiza Farid is currently at the Public Health Institute (PHI) as a Family Planning Data Analysis Advisor. In this role, she is seconded to the FP2030 team at the UN Foundation. She supports analyses related to global family planning. Prior to joining PHI (from 2018-2022), Shiza supported analyses related to family planning and demography at Avenir Health and was at the UN Foundation as a Manager of Global Policy for the Universal Access Project (UAP). She has experience conducting data analysis, data cleaning, and creating data visualizations for UNICEF’s gender portfolio, University of Washington’s Global Center for Integrated Health of Women, Adolescents, and Children, and PATH’s Sayana Press team. Shiza has a Master of Public Health with a concentration in global health metrics and evaluation from the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington and a Bachelors of Arts in Economics and International Relations from American University in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Issoufa Harou

Managing Director of Reproductive and Population Health at the Niger Ministry of Public Health

Dr. Issoufa Harou has been the Managing Director of Reproductive and Population Health since September 2021. He has been the Director of Family Planning at the Niger Ministry of Public Health since 2019. As an OB-GYN with a specialty in surgery, he has more than 15 years of experience in the field of gynecology and obstetric surgery; maternal and child health; and family planning. He is also a trainer in obstetric and urgent neonatal care, screening precancerous legions, prenatal consultation, newborn care, contraceptive technology, and maternal death and clinical audits. Dr. Issoufa Harou is the Vice-President of the Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Niger, President of the Network for the Eradication of Obstetric Fistula, and a permanent member of the International Society for Obstetric Fistula Surgeons (ISOFS).

Dr. Natasha Salifyanji Kaoma

Founder of Copper Rose

Dr. Natasha Salifyanji Kaoma is a global reproductive health champion, medical doctor and epidemiologist. She is passionate about the empowerment of youth and women which prompted her to start Copper Rose, Zambia’s largest youth-led organization that works with adolescents and women by providing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) awareness, menstrual health management, youth leadership, and economic empowerment programs. Natasha has over 9 years of experience in advocacy for youth-friendly services for HIV prevention and demand creation as well as SRHR and HIV integration. She has global leadership expertise as a Family Planning 2020 Reference Group, Dual Prevention Pill advisory board, PMNCH Knowledge and Evidence working group and a member of the UN Every Woman Every Child (UN-EWEC) steering committee. Natasha has won several awards and accolades such as the Queens Young Leaders Award at Buckingham Palace-UK, Zambian Women of the Year Award-Healthcare Champion, 120 Under 40-New Generation of Family Planning Leaders Champion, 2019 Commonwealth Masters Scholar, etc. She is an alumna of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Cambridge University-UK and the University of Zambia.

Dr. Dinah Nakiganda

Assistant Commissioner for Adolescent and School Health at the Ministry of Health, Uganda

Dr. Dinah Nakiganda-Busiku is the Assistant Commissioner for Adolescent and School Health at the Ministry of Health, Uganda. She believes in empowering and supporting adolescents and young people to reach their fullest potential in life. Fast tracking various equity initiatives is one of the ways this can be done. She is a public health specialist from the University of Sydney, Australia and the current Chair of the Uganda National Equity steering committee group.

Shefa Sikder

Senior Technical Advisor in Health at CARE

Shefa works with CARE as a Senior Technical Advisor in Health supporting health programs in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Tanzania, and domestically in the US. Shefa completed her master’s and PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. With Johns Hopkins, she worked in northwest rural Bangladesh for 5 years on community and facility studies on women’s health and family planning. Shefa worked for USAID Washington’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health for 5 years as a Senior Technical Advisor supporting bilateral health projects in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and East Africa. Previously, she worked for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, MCHIP (Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program), and Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.

Dr. Aguima Frank Tankoano

Chief of Party of AmplifyPF

Dr. Tankoano Aguima Frank is a health professional with more than 32 years’ experience out of which 29-years’ public health experience in managing complex international health programs with multicultural teams and assisting healthcare programs in West Africa in health systems strengthening (HSS); Sexual and Reproductive health (SRH), Family Planning, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH); HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and Tuberculosis (TB) prevention and treatment. He is currently the Chief of Party of AmplifyPF, a USAID regional Family Planning flagship program in West Africa managed by Pathfinder international. Prior joining AmplifyPF in August 2018, he served as Chief of Party for Global Funds’ HIV prevention among key populations in Mali with Plan International; Chief of Party of PMI project to promote malaria prevention and treatment (ProMPT) in Ghana; Chief of Party of USAID Family Health project in Benin with University Research Co. Citizen of Burkina Faso, he graduated MD in his country and obtain his MPH at Tulane School of Public Health (New Orleans-USA). He is fluent in English and French; and is a former Humphrey Fellow.

Sira Sojourner Touré

Medical student/youth activist

Touré Sira Sojourner is a young Malian medical student who is passionate about new information and communication technologies. She is also an activist and social changemaker and works in several humanitarian organizations as a standard bearer of youth. Her goal is to improve the living conditions of young people and their access to FP/RH services while considering their needs to ensure they achieve their personal goals. Strongly convinced that advocacy can bring about positive change in the areas of adolescent and youth rep, women’s health, reducing maternal and child mortality, she has become the voice of the voiceless in her community.

Dr. Rhoda Wanyenze, MBChB, MPH, PhD

Dean of the School of Public Health and a Professor in the Department of Disease Control and Environmental Health at Makerere University.

Dr. Wanyenze has vast experience in public health research, capacity building, and program management, especially in infectious diseases, sexual and reproductive health, and health systems. Dr. Wanyenze has led a wide network of research partnerships with academic institutions and ministries of health in Africa. She has served on Boards of several organizations in Uganda and globally. She is a Fellow of the Uganda National Academy of Sciences.