Celebrating World Population Day with launch of family planning campaign in India

India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched five family planning television spots at a World Population Day event in Delhi. SHOPS Plus developed three of them as a part of the project’s oral contraceptive pill campaign. The Ministry will air the spots on government channels nationwide. SHOPS Plus will also air them on private television channels.

The 2019 World Population Day event in India was attended by several key stakeholders from the government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, United Nations agencies, leading local and international NGOs, and other private organizations. Dr. Harsh Vardham, the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, gave the keynote speech on the urgency of family planning and maternal and child health efforts. Prior to the World Population Day event, SHOPS Plus organized roundtable discussions with 13 of the largest oral contraceptive pill marketers and manufacturers in the country. Dr. Amit Shah highlighted these discussions as an example of leveraging public-private partnerships to revive and expand the pill and condom markets.

Every year on July 11, global health organizations and governments recognize World Population Day. It is an opportunity to advocate for population and development needs. This year’s observance focused on the unmet goals of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which identified family planning as critical to sustainable development. 

This campaign dispels popular myths by showing modern women and couples trusting pills to plan their families and futures. It also highlights pills as effective, easy, and safe methods of family planning. To inform the campaign’s messages, SHOPS Plus conducted formative research to identify different ways couples communicate. Each spot is directed toward a specific audience, allowing both men and women to better understand the benefits of using pills.

… we recognize that it's the agency of women that needs to be exercised, and the progressive couple is our route to promoting and encouraging oral contraceptive pill adoption in India. - Abhilash Philip, deputy chief of party, SHOPS Plus team in India

By airing the SHOPS Plus-developed messages with public resources, the government demonstrated its ongoing commitment to helping Indians make informed family planning decisions. The campaign’s broad reach underscores the importance of public-private collaboration in furthering family planning goals.

Watch one of the TV spots below.