Family Planning
Family planning lays the foundation for the health of women and children. It’s intimately linked to economic development.
But millions of women still don’t have access to modern contraception.
Baird’s CMC is working with stakeholders to address this urgent, unmet need.

Today 220 million women around the world want to control whether they have children or not, but for many, diverse and specific local reasons mean that they are unable to.
Guttmacher Institute, Adding it up, costs and benefits of contraceptive services, Estimates for 2012 (2012)
At Baird’s CMC we understand the complex cultural, economic and policy challenges facing agencies and organizations working to deliver family planning services where they’re most needed.
Lack of health services and affordable contraception, together with inaccurate beliefs among women and their partners, stand in the way of easy access to effective contraception.
What we’ve done
Baird’s CMC consultants have worked with major international agencies and corporations to help get modern contraception to the women who need it.
We have
- developed a communications strategy to maximise the impact of research findings on the links between effective population programs and economic development
- found out what stands in the way of access to contraception among some of the poorest women in India, even when women say they need it
- mapped stakeholders in family planning and sexual health across Africa to examine barriers to access in four African countries
- provided global media outreach to support an international women’s health summit

At Baird’s CMC expertise will support you in your efforts to improve women’s reproductive health, every step of the way.
We offer global research capabilities to bring evidence into strategy development from the local to the global.
We can work with you to deliver strong, strategic approaches to access, reimbursement, public policy, behaviour change and service development interventions, communications and stakeholder relations.
We also believe our job is to make sure you can take up where we left off, so we also deliver capacity building and skills transfer services for your own internal teams.
Our people have been working in this field for over 30 years. Between our associates, we have over 400 years of experience in working on family planning and women’s reproductive health.
Marta Dourado and Mark Chataway led a team working for the Rockefeller Foundation and Partners in Population & Development at the pivotal 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development. They have worked together on the subject ever since.
Our past and current clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Guttmacher Institute, Physicians for Reproductive Health, PATH, Merck & Co Inc and the Department of Science & Technology of the Government of South Africa.


Mark Chataway, a Baird’s CMC founder, serves on the board of trustees of Engender Health which works across Africa and Asia to, improve “the lives of men, women, and families through its work in family planning, maternal health, HIV and AIDS, gender equity, and many other programmes.”
He is also on the international advisory board of Amplify Change, a funding organisation which spends money on sexual and reproductive health in Africa and Asia on behalf of the aid agencies of Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK.
Amplify Change is also funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation and ViiV.