After a few days, I’ve finally settled into a sort of schedule at FHI 360, one that is full of project work and meetings with new staff. My favorite meeting today was with Irina Yacobson, a Technical Advisor who trains healthcare providers around the world on how to safely administer contraceptives. As she is Russian, Yacobson was initially hired to work with women in the more remote regions of the former Soviet Union, where the problems with contraception were almost the opposite of those of more conservative or developing countries. Though women did have access to contraception, abortion was used as a method of family planning, and some women had large numbers of abortions rather than taking contraceptives to prevent pregnancy in the first place. FHI 360 worked to both prevent those possibly damaging practices, and I found it interesting to see that the non-profit’s scope was not limited to just preventing pregnancy and STDs in developing countries, but addresses all aspects of women’s health worldwide.
Irina Yacobson also told us about how important experiential teaching is – many organizations dump large quantities of contraception, like IUDs or injections, onto developing countries. But the organizations don’t train the healthcare providers in the countries how to use them: in Eastern Europe, depo-provera, an injectable, was being injected twice a day like an antibiotic instead of once every three months like it was supposed to be, all because there were no instructions accompanying the delivered drugs. That middle step of training between creating the contraceptives and putting them to use is so crucial, but one I’d never thought about before. Lastly, Yacobson showed us her demonstration on how to insert an IUD that she gives to health care providers, with a plastic uterus model and all – it made the whole process a bit less mystical to me. After a couple days with the CTI team, I’ve realized that my sexual education had been lacking in contraceptives beyond just condoms, and other methods as well as female sexual activity and reproduction are still pretty stigmatized, even in the US. That’s why I’ve really appreciated the work the CTI team does – they are working make female reproductive health safer and less stigmatizednot just for teens like us, but for women all around the world.
– Hope
