Creating Change

The exciting Family Planning Conference in Kampala is almost here – and it’s the broad range of people who will be attending that makes for that excitement. Having a child is probably the most important decision any of us makes in a lifetime; it’s time for families all over the world to be able truly to make that decision. Everyone, everywhere should have access to the knowledge and means to do so!

What can this assembly do to advance the field? One idea in particular I’ll mention here: It can bring together those who have long been leaders in the field with a new generation of the future’s leaders. It can strengthen a new generation not only from where contraception is a norm but from where there is still far to go. A new generation that can help create that norm so that every child is born to two adults committed to its future.

It’s not easy to create change. We hope that coming together in Kampala will help this generation of leaders join hands and minds across countries, across regions, so that together they can accomplish what is so difficult to achieve alone.

Laurie Schwab Zabin, PhD, is the founding director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health, and a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.