Women and their families need the knowledge, skills, and social support to make and act on safe reproductive health decisions. Ipas Pakistan employs a variety of strategies to build community awareness around a range of SRHR issues, including the risks of unsafe abortion, when fertility returns after an abortion, and where to access safe services. We build the capacity of Lady Health Workers (LHWs), Family Welfare Assistants (FWA) and male Social Mobilizers to provide correct and updated reproductive health information and to refer individuals to the trained providers. Ipas employed a user-centered design approach to develop innovative social behaviour change tools and messages to engage women and men and build their awareness and support of safe pathways to reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptive care.

1. Engaging Lady Health Workers to Help Women and Girls Access SRHR information, Care and Support
   Since 2007, Ipas has trained almost 3000 LHWs on social support and behavior change around family planning and adoption of safe reproductive health pathways and practices in 11 districts of Pakistan. As a result of Ipas supported interventions; LHWs sensitized 134,760 women on safe pathways for abortion and contraceptive care. Over the past three years, these LHWs have referred 6,341 women seeking post abortion care at Ipas-intervention facilities. Before this intervention LHWs were using dilatation and curettage (D&C) and uterine evacuation (UE) interchangeably, which is an indication of strong prevalence of D&C in Pakistan. According to the pre and post training assessments from June to December 2020, 93% LHWs compared to 28% benchmark reported improved knowledge on safe technologies for abortion and postabortion care.
   Resources for Community Awareness & Engagement
2. ENGAGING MALE COMMUNITY OUTREACH STAFF FOR STRENGTHENING MEN’S ROLE IN CONTRACEPTION:
   Family welfare assistant-males (FWAs) and social mobilizers (SMs) are trained human resource of Population welfare Department (PWD). They are considered as agents to change to community men’s attitudes and enhance their knowledge regarding uptake of family planning methods. They play a promotive role in delivering family planning commodities to community men in far outreach areas, one to one counselling, group discussions with community people, and create linkages between couples and nearby facilities for uptake of long-acting reversible contraceptives and permanent methods.The aim of the intervention is to help newlywed couples access sexual and reproductive health information, care and support for increased uptake of family planning, including interval, postpartum and postabortion contraception. This intervention equips men with correct information and knowledge about the PAC-FP safe pathways and guide and support women to seek safe and appropriate Postabortion care and contraceptive services.
   Resources for Male Involvement & Mobilization