Megan Christofield
- Award:Decade AwardAwarding Organization:College of St. BenedictDate Awarded:June 24, 2017

At the crux of my work as a Family Planning Technical Advisor is a commitment to acknowledging all contraceptive experiences, whether positive or negative, so we can learn from them and make our efforts ever-more suited to the clients we serve. A contraceptive user myself, I know the value of easy access to a well-trained provider and a variety of methods to choose from. For too many women, a bad experience with a provider or method results in disappointment or discontinuation, despite still wanting to avoid pregnancy. This is why I’ve devoted so much of my time to improving continuity care for contraceptive users, particularly expanded access to implant removal services – a topic I’ve published and spoken about frequently.
In high school, I volunteered for a program that offered social support to teenage mothers and saw firsthand the reality of unintended pregnancy, especially the inadequacy of our social systems. Then, as a college student, I studied social justice and traveled abroad to Uganda and South Africa. From those experiences, the tie between reproductive health and social justice became even clearer. When I later joined the Peace Corps, my passion and belief in family planning as a human right only grew
My leadership style is to listen, learn, think critically, and challenge tradition. Whether in improving access to FP in interval periods or postpartum, rethinking how we ensure sufficient support for existing FP users, strategically using advocacy to overcome bottlenecks, or utilizing data in a new and different way, my aim is to work with teams to identify high-yield solutions through deeper understanding of the problem—and in doing so inspire more innovative and impactful programming.
The grant will go towards the creation of a short tool (likely a checklist and resource list) for use by those who design and implement family planning programs to incorporate appropriate, evidence-based program elements to reduce contraceptive discontinuation into their design. Support to existing FP users is often eclipsed by the more alluring ambition of pursuing new users with unmet need. Luckily, there is good evidence for how discontinuation can be reduced, to be utilized in this tool.
- http://www.ghspjournal.org/content/4/3/366.full.pdf+html
- https://www.rhsupplies.org/fileadmin/uploads/rhsc/General_Membership_Meetings/Se...
- https://www.k4health.org/blog/post/what-goes-must-come-out
- http://reprolineplus.org/resources/implants-LRP
- http://reprolineplus.org/resources/Implanon-NXT-OJT-LRP