Responding to Unmet Family Planning Needs through Social Networks in Mali

The TJ social network approach to decrease barriers to socio-normative factors stopping women and men who want to space births from taking actions to use FP methods, was developed and tested in Benin. Given TJ proved to be highly successful in increasing use of modern contraception, it was introduced to Mali, representing TJ’s scale up to other West African countries. This brief describes the results of the scale up experience from Benin to Mali, and offers important lessons on how to create demand for a new approach in a new country, and how to assess if the adapted approach remained true to the Benin original, yielding similar FP uptake results and decreased social and gender barriers to acting on unmet need.