Sexual and Reproductive Health

CAI is committed to reproductive rights and justice and has been since its incorporation in 1979. We provide training, technical assistance, implementation support, and more to help health departments, health care networks, safety-net providers, schools and school districts address both long-standing and emerging issues.

CAI was on the forefront of helping family planning providers conduct HIV testing and link clients to services, and now we’re working across the country to integrate pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) services to prevent HIV in people with increased risk of transmission. We’ve focused specifically on ensuring that underserved populations have access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, including LGBTQ people, communities of color, and men. We work with agencies to use patient experience measures to continuously improve their services and support the effective use of telehealth to improve patient access. CAI also brings particular expertise in addressing the SRH needs of adolescents and in using positive youth development strategies to strengthen programs.

Our work is grounded in a commitment to ensuring that all people are in control of their reproductive lives and decisions. CAI helps providers apply principles of reproductive justice in the delivery of contraceptive care—working with providers to recognize past and current instances of reproductive injustice and the power they hold as health care professionals; develop a deeper understanding of the intersectional nature of the reproductive justice framework; and consider actions they can take at the interpersonal, systems, and community levels to promote reproductive justice. We developed a structured approach for facilitating a client-centered contraceptive counseling session that has been packaged and disseminated nationally in the Contraceptive Action Plan (CAP) 5-Step Contraceptive Counseling Model, which represents one of the first tools to apply principles of reproductive justice in the delivery of family planning services. CAI has also worked extensively to identify the primary and secondary drivers of access to contraception, developed assessment tools to help healthcare providers examine their strengths, gaps, and the extent to which their current systems address each of these drivers, and developed a comprehensive Client-Centered Contraceptive Care Change Package.

For almost a decade CAI has focused on building the capacity of Federally Qualified Health Centers and similar providers in integration of contraceptive and reproductive health services into primary and pediatric care settings using tools we have developed as part of our Contraceptive Action Plan. These materials include an implementation guide and numerous resources to support assessing current practice against best practice, identifying and addressing gaps in practice, and measuring performance over time.