Trainer’s Reference Guide for Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy

This trainer’s reference guide is an updated and revised version of the Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy (HTSP) Trainer’s Reference Guide. The update and revision were done by the staff from the Extending Service Delivery (ESD) Project, with support and guidance from the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health, United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

This guide serves as a resource for trainers in developing in-service training for facility-based healthcare providers and community health workers, who already have some basic experience with and an understanding of reproductive health (RH)/family planning (FP). It focuses only on the evidence of the health and social outcomes that are related to too early and too closely spaced pregnancies. It discusses all methods of family planning, including long acting and permanent methods, and provides information on assessing fertility intentions and desired family size with all clients, including older women and/or high parity women, who may be particularly interested in long acting or permanent methods. This is not a training manual, but a reference guide, which can be used and adapted by trainers based on whether the trainees are facility-based or community-based.

The document contains the following chapters:

1. Introduction and overview
   
2. Healthy timing and spacing of pregnancy (HTSP)
   
3. Review of family planning methods
   
4. Counselling skills for HTSP and family planning
   
5. Resources for training on HTSP
   
6. HTSP training tools
   
7. Training handouts