DMPA-SC integration in preservice training: Lessons from Uganda

Updating family planning and reproductive health preservice training is an important approach to make an impact on the health workforce and foster successful programs. In 2021, the DMPA-SC Access Collaborative, in collaboration with Uganda’s Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and Sports, conducted a regional training for clinical and health training institutions on the topic of DMPA-SC including self-injection. This training integrated DMPA-SC content into the health provider preservice curriculum, trained tutors, and helped advance national scale-up of self-injection. As a result, 92 Ugandan health training institutions included self-injection content in their preservice curriculum for nurses, midwives, and clinical officers, and 190 tutors were trained—which will help ensure training of many more providers in the future.

During this process, the Access Collaborative gained valuable insights with relevance to other country contexts. This webinar held on January 27, 2022 highlighted lessons learnt, challenges, recommendations, and considerations for the inclusion of self-injection content in provider preservice training. In the Ugandan context, these include:

• How inclusion of self-injection in preservice training can help reach FP2030 country commitments.
• Virtual preservice training approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Costs for the inclusion of self-injection in preservice training.
• The role of regulators and the Ministry of Health in ensuring availability of DMPA-SC for preservice training.