Assessing Costs and Benefits Of Sexual and Reproductive Health Interventions

In this current climate of financial constraints coupled with competing priorities among developmental goals it becomes ever more critical for policymakers and others responsible for allocating resources to have first-rate tools available as a guide for effective decision making. The overall aim of this report is to inform such decision makers about the key findings of existing studies about the costs and benefits of investments in sexual and reproductive health to identify what factors the studies encompass and what they leave out and to provide a complete picture of what the costs and benefits would look like including benefits that are hard to measure. This report is a technical companion to a shorter monograph. It has three parts: (1) a review and synthesis of what is known about the costs and benefits of investments in sexual and reproductive health; (2) a comprehensive outline that can be used by researchers and policymakers to view the gamut of costs and benefits which it is hoped will lead to improvement in the measurement of costs and benefits of sexual and reproductive health investments; and (3) in order to demonstrate the advantages of taking a more comprehensive approach to measuring costs and benefits a partial application of the framework in the reproductive and maternal health field namely in the area of contraceptive services and supplies. (excerpt)