Building evidence and generating new knowledge through research

Home 9 Our Work 9 Building evidence and generating new knowledge through research

Ipas conducts policy- and program-relevant research on abortion in collaboration with diverse global, regional, national and local partners. We generate new knowledge for the larger reproductive health and rights community. We also focus on targeted research to understand more about women’s needs and wants regarding reproductive health care and how they make decisions about contraception and abortion.

Our priorities

Building national-level evidence for turning policy into practice—with the aim of increasing access to high-quality abortion care around the world
Evaluating the effectiveness and impact of sexual and reproductive health and rights programs
Testing new approaches to build programmatic evidence
Generating new evidence for important unanswered questions in the sexual and reproductive health and rights arena
Using methods that raise up the voices and stories of people closest to our work

Why do this research?

Formative and intervention research identifies existing gaps and generates new knowledge for the larger reproductive health and rights community.
Study findings inform the development of improved national policies and health system practices.
Ipas’s growing body of evidence enables us to evaluate and improve our programmatic effectiveness.

Our contributions to the global evidence base on abortion include groundbreaking national abortion incidence and morbidity studies, operations research on measures to improve the cost-effectiveness and quality of abortion services, and evaluation of community-based interventions. Ipas also works to strengthen service-delivery monitoring and evaluation within national health systems to help improve programs and measure impact.

Abortion Care Quality (ACQ) Tool

The first ever global standard for measuring the quality of abortion services in low- and middle-income countries is here.

What is the ACQ Tool?

Research highlights from 2023

Ipas staff and partners carried out important research and analyses in 2023, leading to more than 20 publications. Here’s an overview of highlights from the year.

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