From Evidence to Action: Reflections on ICFP 2025

The International Conference on Family Planning happened in Bogotá on November 1-6 and the Vitala Team was thrilled to participate! We attended and presented at scientific sessions and poster presentations, we led and contributed to discussions with youth, partners, funders and other stakeholders, and we made connections with tons of like-minded people who together are helping to strengthen sexual and reproductive health and rights across the world.

One thing was clear across the contexts and experiences highlighted at the conference: as the SRH funding and rights landscape continually shifts, it becomes increasingly important to look for innovative ways to make an impact among populations that have historically been excluded from access to sexual and reproductive health services, especially in areas with legal restrictions and strong social barriers, stigma and misinformation that limits access to care for key populations.

Here we want to share five themes that stood out to our team at ICFP

These are some ideas and concepts we are taking away from ICFP to help us keep improving Aya Contigo and strengthening health systems and community-based models of care in Latin America and the US:

1. Moving beyond access to services as the only indicator of success: It’s promising - and very aligned with Vitala’s mission - to see the field moving beyond access to services as the primary indicator of success. While improving access does remain a key aspect of our work, stakeholders are increasingly recognizing that measuring the impact of SRH programs, and specifically abortion-related programs and services, should also include ongoing assessments of the quality of the experience. Presentations from organizations including Ipas, Ibis Reproductive Health and La Revuelta feminist collective from Argentina shed light on how they’ve used validated quality of care frameworks to better understand abortion-seekers’ experiences, even for self-managed abortions that take place outside of a clinical setting. This emphasis on quality of care brings much-needed attention to the emotional, cognitive, and relational dimensions of abortion care. It reflects a broader paradigm shift where autonomy, wellbeing, and the person’s sense of control are treated as core outcomes rather than secondary considerations. By incorporating measures of emotional support, safety, affirmation, and empowerment into evaluation frameworks, programs are better positioned to capture the full spectrum of what people need to navigate abortion with dignity.

"Measuring Abortion Care to Advance SRHR Monitoring" Panel presenters, left to right: Ruth Zurbriggen (Colectiva Feminista La Revuelta); Dr. Mariana Romero (co-director, CEDES - REDAAS); Sofia Braunstein (Research Manager, Ibis Reproductive Health); Chiara Bercu (Senior Associate Project Director, Ibis Reproductive Health)

2. Mental health and SRH: This trend is in line with a growing acknowledgment that mental health and SRH cannot be treated as parallel or siloed domains. Conversations throughout the conference highlighted how decisions, experiences, and outcomes related to sexuality, contraception, pregnancy, and abortion are inseparable from people’s emotional and psychological realities. As complex beings, people experience SRH within emotional, psychological, cultural, and relational contexts. This integrated perspective is slowly reshaping how programs define success and what kinds of outcomes matter, ultimately strengthening our collective ability to design care models that respond to the whole person rather than just the clinical event. Feminist accompaniment models like those implemented by Aya Contigo counselors to support users before, during and after an abortion or miscarriage exemplify this shift, demonstrating how emotional validation, reassurance, and shared decision-making are integral components of quality care.

From a breakout session during the ICFP Youth Summit about the connections between SRH and mental health

3. The importance of including adolescents at all stages of program development and implementation: Youth and adolescents are often spoken about in program design, but too rarely spoken with. Too often, we are positioned as passive beneficiaries rather than active collaborators. Yet, when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), we bring unique, intersectional needs, preferences, and lived experiences that cannot be ignored. The principle is clear: “Nothing for us without us.”

   
   

The Vitala Global Youth Advisory Council (YAC) exemplifies this approach, by embedding adolescents and young people into decision-making about Aya Contigo, in this sense Vitala ensures programs are youth responsive, inclusive, and transformative. Similarly, the FP2030 delegation of young people at ICFP demonstrated the power of youth participation on global stages. Our presence is not symbolic—it is strategic. We bring fresh perspectives, challenge entrenched norms, and remind people that we are not the future of SRHR advocacy; we are the present and the future.

Delegation and Advocacy

• The FP2030 youth delegation represented countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, including Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela.

• Young leaders brought fresh ideas, bold solutions, and perspectives that challenged the status quo, ensuring equity and inclusivity in family planning and SRHR discussions.

• Our participation was framed as a “youth takeover”, highlighting that adolescents and young people are not passive attendees but active collaborators shaping the global agenda.

If we are serious about advancing SRHR, we must move beyond tokenism. Youth deserve seats at every table—design, implementation, evaluation, and adjustment. Our leadership must be nurtured, their voices amplified, and their intersectional realities centered.

Youth representatives from Ola Jóven / FP2030

4. Intersectionality: Intersectionality in program design and implementation ensures that populations who have historically been marginalized, but who have always played an important role in the fight for sexual and reproductive rights, are a fundamental presence in relevant spaces. It’s not only about inclusion, rather a real acknowledgement of the knowledge and experiences of LGBTIQ+ people, people with disabilities, people of diverse races and geographic locations, and others. Move from prescriptive intersectionality to collaborative intersectionality (translated from Spanish) was the call to action shared by muxe activist Amaranta Gómez Regalado during the conference. It is urgent that intersectionality is a transversal component of all SRH programs, not as an inclusion quota, rather as a tangible policy, embedded in the day-to-day operations of each organization.

ICFP was a richly diverse space. However, there are some points to reflect on:

• Principal spokespersons: the majority of the speakers at the conference were cis men, including many white men. Intersectionality should also be represented by the people who are on the biggest stages and the most “important” panels

• Trans presence: While we did hear from a few important and necessary trans voices during the conference, overall the presence of trans participants was minimal. This reflects the collective reality around the lack of resources so that trans organizations are able to access these important spaces.

• Language barriers: hosting ICFP in Latin America for the first time ever was a huge step forward. However, the primary language spoken throughout the conference was English, and translation was not available for all sessions (particularly poster sessions), an aspect that proved to be an obstacle to active participation for those who don’t speak the language.

These reflections should lead us to solutions and proposals so that the ICFP space strives to be more diverse, accessible and inclusive for community-based organizations. For example:

• Active dialogues led by community-based organizations in distinct regions

• Scholarships and travel awards specifically for queer women, trans people and sex workers to participate in the conference

• Collective co-creation of transversal policies to promote the inclusion of diverse types of organizations in academic conference spaces

5. Social impact / mission-aligned revenue generation, funding landscape challenges/opportunities: as financing opportunities for SRH-related projects and initiatives become more scarce, organizations must look to diversify revenue sources, in mission-aligned ways, in order to decrease reliance on grants and philanthropic funds alone. During ICFP its was common to hear that the current global funding environment is challenging, reminding us of the huge impact of the dismantling of USAID, for example, in the work done by several organizations around the world; it was also common to hear about financing from the supply perspective, considering the limitations and opportunities to access SRH supply around the globe. However, there were not many opportunities to discuss innovative financing alternatives for local and national organizations in the SRH space.

   
   

A future program of the conference could ideally include opportunities to share and discuss other revenue generation alternatives to reduce donor dependency, which would also be an ideal opportunity to showcase the experiences of organizations around the world that have developed innovative sustainable models that allows them to reduce their donor dependency and increase their capacity to provide services, information and support to communities even in challenging settings. 

Examples of sessions we saw on this topic at ICFP:

• Strengthening Family Planning Markets: Private Sector Roles, Financing, and Quality Assurance

• Financial Strategies and Regional Approaches to Strengthen SRHR Commodity Security

• Rethinking Sustainable Financing for Youth-Focused Initiatives in the Face of Global Funding Cuts

Overall, ICFP was an inspiring and enriching experience and the Vitala team thanks Johns Hopkins University, FP2030 and the Bergstrom foundation for facilitating our participation!