Challenge
As the only federal program dedicated solely to providing family planning and reproductive health, Title X provides a broad range of effective family planning methods and services to those who might need them the most but to whom they may not readily available. The purpose of the Title X guidelines is to assist current and prospective grantees in understanding and utilizing the family planning service grants program in relation to project management and administration and clinic management and clinical service requirements. Although the primary target audience of the guidelines is Title X grantees, these guidelines can and do serve as a standard of care for other stakeholders.
Solution
The Office of Population Affairs (OPA) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) engaged Atlas Research to revise the program guidelines in order to:
- Produce evidence-based or evidence-informed Title X program guidelines that also provide a service/contribution to the greater reproductive health community;
- Create a process/mechanism for keeping the guidelines current; and
- Use the review of evidence, and the gaps identified, to inform OPA’s future research efforts.
Result
Atlas assisted in this process by designing the agenda and facilitating four interdisciplinary expert workgroup meetings to provide overall direction for the project and six technical panel meetings focusing on specific sections of the guidelines. Technical panel topics included counseling and education, community outreach, adolescents, clinical services for women, clinical services for males, and quality improvement/assurance. Atlas also assisted with the development of the revised guidelines and the plan for their dissemination.