Family planning: Smartest investment for achieving the Sustainable Developments Goals for Pakistan

Investing in voluntary family planning services and commodities is a cost-effective intervention for socio-economic development. Every dollar spent on family planning results in reductions in child and maternal deaths, returns in savings in other development areas, and environmental benefits. Investments in family planning yield demonstrated social and economic returns in all sectors - food, water, health, and economic development. Our analysis suggests that achieving universal access to contraception could contribute in the long term to achieving some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We applied the Family Planning-Sustainable Development Goals (FP-SDGs) Model that quantifies the benefits voluntary contraceptive use offers for realizing 13 of the SDG indicators which are related to 7 out of the 17 SDGs Goals. The model unravelling the multi-sectoral benefits of contraceptive use and shows that family planning can accelerate progress across the 7 SDG. Further, it shows that family planning does not only empower women to choose the number, timing, and spacing of their pregnancies but also touches on many multisectoral determinants vital to sustainable development. We show that in the case of Pakistan, without universal access to family planning and reproductive health, the impact and effectiveness of other interventions will be less, will cost more, and will take longer to achieve. In the end, we put some key recommendations to prioritize family planning as one of the strategic national development investments.