This document summarizes the development and dissemination of maternal, infant, and young child nutrition counseling cards in Ethiopia that integrate family planning messages. The project objectives were to increase community support for optimal nutrition behaviors, improve provider performance, and enable better nutrition service provision. Key activities included developing the counseling cards through stakeholder workshops and pretesting, training over 300 health workers, and disseminating 4,300 card sets in local languages. The cards provide examples of integrating family planning into messages around exclusive breastfeeding, postnatal care, and complementary feeding.

1. Integrating Family Planning Messages into
Maternal, Infant, and Young Child Nutrition
Counseling Cards
An example from the Infant & Young Child Nutrition Project in Ethiopia
Stephanie Martin
Program Officer
Maternal and Child
Health and Nutrition
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein

2. IYCN in Ethiopia
Project objectives
• Increased community and
household support for
optimal nutrition behaviors
• Improved provider
performance
• Improved enabling
environment for nutrition
service provision in the
context of HIV
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein

3. Counseling cards development process
• Conducted literature review,
materials inventory, and
service provision assessment
• Facilitated message and
materials workshop with key
stakeholders
• Designed and pretested
counseling cards

4. Training and dissemination
• Developed training
manual on MIYCN
counseling
• Trained more than
300 health workers
plus TOTs
• Disseminated 4,300
sets in Amharic,
Oromo, and Tigrigna
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein

5. Examples of message integration
Page 5 5/7/2012
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein

6. Exclusive breastfeeding
• When you exclusively breastfeed your baby during the first 6 months and
have no menses, you are practicing a family planning method called LAM.
LAM no longer protects against pregnancy when even one of those
conditions change. Ask your health worker for information about other
family planning methods.

7. Postnatal care
• It is important to think about family planning options in order to have time
for you and your baby to be healthy and grow strong. Healthy timing and
spacing of pregnancy means waiting at least 2 to 3 years before becoming
pregnant again… and allows you and your baby enough time to grow
strong and healthy before becoming pregnant again too soon.

8. Appropriate complementary foods
• Remember when you introduce complementary foods to your baby at 6
months, you are no longer practicing LAM. You will need to use another
family planning method even if your menses have not returned. By
avoiding another pregnancy too soon, you can help your baby grow strong.

9. Next steps
• Counseling cards are currently
being reprinted in all three
languages by the new nutrition
bilateral in Ethiopia
• MIYCN-FP Integration Working
Group is developing guidance on
integrating messages that will be
available on the K4H Toolkit
PATH/Evelyn Hockstein

10. Acknowledgments
• IYCN Ethiopia:
• Dr. Belaynesh Yifru Mulugeta, former IYCN Ethiopia Country
Coordinator
• Zemene Mengistie, former IYCN Senior Nutrition Advisor
The counseling cards, training manual, and other nutrition
resources are available from www.iycn.org/Ethiopia
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) funded these activities under the terms of Cooperative
Agreement No. GPO-A-00-06-00008-00.