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Addressing unmet needs for reproductive health services: decision-linked research in the Arab world.

Concerned with a leveling off in the demand for contraception in the Arab world a regional director at the International Planned Parenthood Federation sought to adopt an approach used to address a similar problem in Ecuador and Bangladesh. This paper discusses how Arab countries successfully applied the Decision-Linked Research Approach (D-LRA) to address unmet health needs for reproductive health. The D-LRA is a tool for bridging the gap between the research process and policy and programmatic decisions about health services. The approach developed by Management Sciences for Health (MSH) includes two key components: the decision- linked research process and a reproductive health system model. The three phases of the decision-linked research process include: 1) creating a partnership between researchers and decision-makers; 2) collaborating on research methodology and making research findings understandable; and 3) disseminating findings and transforming them into decisions and action. The second component of MSH’s D-LRA illustrates the reproductive health system and is used to analyze both how well a system is functioning and at what levels improvements need to be made. Overall the lessons learned in the use of D-LRA in the Arab world will be remembered for two things: the breakthrough in researchers and decision-makers understanding about unmet needs and the collaborative linkages leading to actions.