Reproductive Health in Crisis Situations

Among the world’s 34 million displaced people, approximately 80% are women and children and are vulnerable to abuses and negative health outcomes during crisis. Women often become heads of households because they are widowed or deserted during displacement and become sole providers and caretakers of their families. It is essential to have appropriate reproductive health services that will—

• Ensure safe pregnancies and deliveries.
• Meet family planning needs.
• Prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS.
• Respond to and prevent gender-based violence (GBV).

Understanding the reproductive health needs of conflict-affected women will enable organizations to implement and enhance programs and services to improve the health of women and their families. The Reproductive Health Assessment Toolkit (RHA) for Conflict-Affected Women provides user-friendly tools to quantitatively assess the reproductive health needs of conflict-affected women aged 15–49 years. The RHA Toolkit enables field staff to collect data to inform program planning, monitoring, evaluation, and advocacy. It promotes using the collected data to enhance services and improve the reproductive health of women and their families.

A Process Evaluation of the Reproductive Health Assessment (RHA) Toolkitfor Conflict-Affected Women: A Report of Findings, Recommendations, and Next Steps [PDF – 760KB]

DRH conducted a process evaluation in 2009 to examine if the toolkit provides necessary and useful tools to guide program staff in collecting reproductive health data that inform program planning in crisis settings. In this report we present the results of that evaluation, including an examination of the factors that affect the use of the RHA Toolkit, and provide recommendations to sustain the RHA Toolkit post funding.