Background: Governments faced with family planning funding shortfalls have moved toward mobilizing and coordinating all sectors through a “total market approach” (TMA). This retrospective analysis focuses on best practices from TMA experiences in Indonesia, Mexico, Romania, Thailand, and Turkey. We aimed to learn which practices or contextual factors fostered total market planning, and specifically whether and how deliberate, proactive and coordinated approaches by government may have contributed to total market engagement.
Methods: For each country, we examined government support for family planning, level of contraceptive use, coordination with broader health sector reforms, and operating environments for the private sector. We considered policy change in terms of eight good practice hypotheses and gathered data on modern contraceptive prevalence rates (MCPR) by wealth quintile and public-private
sources.
Results: Based on this analysis, especially alongside contextual factors of government leadership and stable demand, six of the eight processes can be hypothesized as good practices for total market planning: ensuring problem recognition among key stakeholders, aligning priorities with national government strategies, collecting data about health markets, evaluating options through pilots, engaging all levels of the health system (national and sub-national), and evaluating results. Our review found that government agencies in Indonesia and Thailand played a significant role in deliberate, proactive, and/or coordinated planning processes to meet demand for family planning across sectors.
Conclusions: We concluded that deliberate government planning and action, especially leadership and support for family planning, contribute to total market programming. Prospective monitoring and evaluation of TMAs moving forward can contribute to clearer roadmaps.