Research Project: PROMIS 2 - Scaling Up Access to Family Planning in the DR Congo

Overview

PROMIS 2 expands rights-based family planning across 12 provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The project combines community contraceptive services, health-system strengthening, and girls' education and empowerment to reduce unmet need, improve maternal health, and advance environmental resilience through poverty reduction. Tulane serves as the project's Program Coordination Agent and Technical Lead and as an implementing partner.

Why This Matters

Women and adolescents in underserved rural and peri-urban communities across the DRC often lack nearby, affordable services that offer a broad choice of contraceptive methods, leaving a persistent unmet need for family planning. By helping women and couples exercise reproductive choice, PROMIS 2 aims to improve maternal and child health, expand educational and economic opportunities, and contribute to the country's demographic dividend and long-term environmental resilience.

Our Approach

Tulane and its partners are expanding access to family planning through the following activities.

• Delivering voluntary, rights-based contraceptive services through clinic, community, pharmacy, social-marketing, mobile-service, school, and university channels.
• Creating demand and offering adolescent sexual and reproductive health programming alongside girls' education and empowerment.
• Strengthening commodity supply and data systems.
• Supporting national and provincial health institutions.
• Coordinating the consortium as Program Coordination Agent and Technical Lead, strengthening national partner capacity, verifying consolidated technical reporting, and monitoring results.

Potential Impact

PROMIS 2 is designed to generate at least 10 million couple-years of protection from unintended pregnancy over four years (a couple-year is a standard measure of the contraceptive protection provided to a couple over one year). Reaching that goal would expand access to voluntary family planning and support better health, education, and economic opportunities for women and families.

Key Achievements

• Exceeded the first-year service-delivery target despite an abbreviated implementation period. After the project's operational launch in June 2025, PROMIS 2 generated 1,614,668 couple-years of protection, reaching 128% of its Year 1 target.
• Expanded voluntary contraceptive choice through complementary service-delivery channels, including community providers, health facilities, pharmacies, mobile and outreach services, and social-marketing networks. Community-based services provided 290,402 contraceptive implants without method-specific quotas, consistent with informed-choice principles.
• Trained 16,207 providers and other personnel, including 15,347 community-based providers (many mobilized through Tulane's nursing-school model), 447 clinical providers, 299 pharmacy and drug-shop providers, and 114 trainers, supervisors, government personnel, and education-sector actors. Training covered quality family planning services, counseling, safe method provision, data management, and commodity systems.
• Mobilized more than $6.6 million in additional contraceptive resources, including $5.3 million from a private donor, $477,000 from UNFPA, and $882,000 from the Government of the DRC.

Research Partnerships