Communicating Population and Family Planning

Abstract

All but 8 percent of the developing worlds population now lives in countries which support activities designed explicitly or implicitly to reduce high rates of fertility. This Bulletin describes the indispensable role of planned communication in the rapid expansion of these activities from the emphasis on making contraceptives accessible to those ready to receive them typical of early family programs to promotion of a full range of beyond family planning measures aimed at creating a climate in which small families are viewed as desirable by people everywhere. Current approaches to planned population and family communication as illustrated by numerous country examples range from the use of field workers volunteers midwives and the like who deliver their messages on a person-to-person basis to full-scale mass communication campaigns which may employ both traditional folk media and modern advertising and social marketing techniques. Also discussed are population education as a somewhat different approach not necessarily aimed at reduced fertility and the recent rapid shift in the U.S. climate for population and family communication. (authors)