Development of a tool to assess the gender competency of family planning providers On February 23, 2022, Data for Impact (D4I) hosted the first webinar in a series focusing on integration in global health monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). This webinar, led by Katherine Andrinopoulos, explored the development of a tool to assess gender competency among family planning providers. Gender competency refers to the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that providers need to mitigate gender-related factors that influence a client’s family planning decision making. Gender competency encompasses multiple areas including gender-sensitive communication, promoting individual agency, couples’ communication, engaging men and boys, legal rights, and addressing gender-based violence. With increased gender competency, they can be more responsive to the diverse needs of their clients and deliver high-quality services During this webinar, the presenter described the process used to develop an assessment tool to measure gender competency and a related discussion guide. She also shared results from piloting the tool in Ghana with family planning providers by using cognitive interviews. While this tool focuses on family planning, there is ample opportunity to expand skills in gender competency to other health service areas. Integration is of increasing importance to global health MEL as more resources are dedicated to improving the integration and use of data from routine health and other sector information systems for evaluation. An increased number of projects tackling a range of health issues at once as well as projects spanning multiple sectors—health and education, health and environment, etc.—also means a greater need to evaluate and learn from these integrated models. Watch the webinar recording and view the presentation slides. About the Speaker Katherine Andrinopoulos, PhD, MHS, is a researcher with D4I and an associate professor in the department of International Health and Sustainable Development at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She conducts applied research in the areas of gender, HIV, and family planning.
