1. Key decisions:
day 1 & morning day 2

2. Approved June 2016 Reference Group Minutes
Formal decisions
Approved June 2016 Reference Group Minutes
Family planning 2020 reference group meeting – October 31 - November 1

3. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 1
Addressing the financing gap for family planning programs and commodity supply
[Session 1.4] Challenge: Family Planning messaging often does not resonate with other sectors and can be an impediment to additional resources and integration of family planning into other programs.
Recommendation: Consider a new approach - engage with other sectors to find out how we can fit in with their work. Develop messaging strategies to better connect with other sectors overall, including Finance Ministries, and find opportunities to engage with these sectors in 2017.
[Session 1.4] Challenge: Lack of understanding in implementing programs at scale that are responsive to the evidence, particularly for youth.
Recommendation: Review ongoing landscaping of evidence-informed solutions and consider developing a process to support implementation at the country-level.

4. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 1
Addressing the financing gap for family planning programs and commodity supply
[Session 2.1] Challenge: Can we disaggregate donor allocations or total family planning expenditures to better understand if young people or those in lower wealth quintiles are paying out of pocket for services?
Recommendation: Conduct analysis regarding potential expenditure variation by wealth quintile and age.
Recommendation: Conduct analysis regarding potential expenditure variation among LMI countries by income.
[Session 2.2] Challenge: Access to country quantification of supplies and needs seems to be a problem. What’s the obstacle and is there a role of the RG?
Recommendation: Increase visibility of country quantification data so it can be used more effectively for trend and projection efforts.

5. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 2
Improving visibility and tracking of domestic expenditures and donor funding
[Session 1.4] Challenge: How can FP2020 better incentivize financing? How do we better hold governments accountable for financial commitments and domestic resource mobilization, so that in the near-term family planning is co-financed and in the long-term is domestically financed.
Recommendation: Support Health ministries to more effectively mobilize resources and make the case for family planning to other sectors, including Ministries of Finance, Education, and Planning.
[Session 2.1] Challenge: Global disparity regarding how donors report country FP expenditures, including proportion of co-mingled funds.
Recommendation: Donors should explore opportunities to harmonize FP expenditure reporting methods.
Recommendation: Donors should explore opportunities to align efforts and potentially co- finance.

6. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 2
Improving visibility and tracking of domestic expenditures and donor funding
[Session 2.1] Challenge: Countries are not using the WHO Health Accounts FP module and have challenges estimating the share of FP expenditures related to general health system costs.
Recommendation: Advocate for the importance of, and consider creating incentives or requirements for countries to submit their FP expenditures information to the WHO System of Health Accounts.
Recommendation: Agree upon a system for estimating the FP share of general health system costs or alternatively reduce the domestic expenditure tracking to a limited but more easily measured set of expenses.
[Session 2.1] Challenge: How do we use resources for the highest yield? Are we making smart funding decisions? What is the return on investment? What is being lost on transactional costs between global, country, and subnational levels?
Recommendation: ACTION: Track capitol flows from donors to recipients to better understand above facility and/or transactional costs with the goal of reducing the disconnect between total donor expenses and country allocations.
Recommendation: Examine whether we are spending on programs that work. Employ more effective evaluation, strengthen the evidence base, explore performance-based financing.

7. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 3
Prioritizing rights and evidence-based programs to effectively meet the contraception needs of adolescents and youth, especially in CIPs and GFF investment case development
[Session 1.3] Challenge: Prioritizing FP in fragile and conflict settings in the remaining years of the Partnership.
Recommendation: Organize a session during one of the 2017 Reference Group meetings on family planning in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
Recommendation: Cultivate a relationship with, and advocate for, the importance of FP in fragile and conflict settings with new global leaders (e.g., incoming UNSG Guterres)
[Session 2.3b] Challenge: Ensure that GFF leads to measurable impact for FP at the country level.
Recommendation: Recognize the potential and limitations of the GFF as an FP funding solution – it can play an important role but will not solve all funding needs.
ACTION: Explore Global Fund’s new fund to promote gender issues, equity and rights as a potential funding source for FP country programs in Move quickly on this.

8. Agreed actions – CHALLENGE 3
Prioritizing rights and evidence-based programs to effectively meet the contraception needs of adolescents and youth, especially in CIPs and GFF investment case development
[Session 3.1] Challenge: How do we use data to identify investments and actions that can be taken in the short-term to increase mCPR.
ACTION: Request that Track20 identify which countries have sufficient sample size to look at unmarried youth in the cohort as opposed to the age group.
Recommendation: Encourage over-sampling or sufficient sampling in different surveys (DHS, PMA2020, MICS, National Surveys) that would allow for more regular disaggregation.
Recommendation: Need to further define “access” measure in the country dashboard tables so people understand the measure and its limitations. Any further actions related to access need to be explored at the country-level.
Recommendation: Look more deeply into data to expand post-partum family planning to look at other post-pregnancy opportunities – PAC, miscarriage, and other missed opportunities. (Aligns with recent recommendation from the PME Working Group)

9. Agreed actions – CHALLENGE 3
Prioritizing rights and evidence-based programs to effectively meet the contraception needs of adolescents and youth, especially in CIPs and GFF investment case development
[Session 3.1] Challenge: Identifying the evidence base for “what works” for youth and communicating that to countries and programs.
Recommend actions:
Expand the political space and common cause to address adolescent contraception - build coalition to navigate the political obstacles and social taboos.
Improve understanding of what works for young people at all levels - from the Reference Group to the sub-national level, including FP2020 focal points.
Orchestrate provision of technical assistance for policy formulation, strategy, implementing and monitoring, review, and research.
Celebrate the positive deviant countries and document what and how they did it.
Consistently partner with young people in decision-making, design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation – and accountability.

10. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 4
Ensuring global processes are structured to be driven by and responsive to country needs (FP2020, GFF, PMNCH)
[Session 1.4] Challenge: Insufficient mechanisms and support for CSO’s and young people to participate in accountability efforts.
Recommendation: Create a support system for youth networks and CSOs so that they can be engaged not just in advocacy but also in accountability efforts, primarily at the local level. Opportunity for FP2020 to learn from PMNCH, OP, and others on means of supporting this.
[Session 1.4] Challenge: Concern about the many and complex accountability mechanisms and frameworks to which governments and commitment makers must respond across many different SRMNCAH frameworks.
Recommendation: Examine ways to simplify and harmonize accountability frameworks to reduce reporting burden on countries and commitment makers.
[Session 1.4] Challenge: How do we link country level and global accountability. If donors and partners at a global effort are able to meet their global commitments, how do we ensure that these translate into results and greater resources and efforts at a country level.
Recommendation: More accurately and transparently track financing from donor allocations to actual country level spending and then link this to results.

11. Agreed actions – CHALLENGE 3 – NOT VETTED YET
Prioritizing rights and evidence-based programs to effectively meet the contraception needs of adolescents and youth, especially in CIPs and GFF investment case development
[Session 3.1] Challenge: Country Support Model in Action
Recommendation Actions: Related to data in the country model
Increase socialization and visibility of FP indicators and annual reporting so that more people understand and are comfortable with the data
Reconcile additional users versus HMIS FP visits
Align indicators across different accountability mechanisms
Identify and track discreet areas of data around financing
Recommendation Actions: Advocacy
Assistance increasing domestic allocation and disbursement of budget for FP
Assistance ensuring that appropriate HIPs are implemented
Recommendation Coordination: Further opportunities for South-South learning, particularly from countries that have made great progress
Recommendation CIP: Ensure that the CIP is a living document that is closely related to existing plans – One Plan II
Recommendation: Improve connection with CSOs and integrated them with FP2020

12. Agreed actions - CHALLENGE 4- Not vetted yet
Ensuring global processes are structured to be driven by and responsive to country needs (FP2020, GFF, PMNCH)
[Session 1.4] Challenge: Ensuring advocates and civil society are able to contribute to positive outcomes at the country-level.
Recommendation: Assist advocates to have the data packaged in the forms that they need for advocacy efforts, and ensure that they have transparent access to different types of data such as commodities
Recommendation: Ensure that DHIS2 system improves so that civil society organizations working on particular capacity building efforts can take advantage of the regular data systems to measure impacts.
Recommendation: Establish systems for sustainability so that the efforts of FP2020 are not lost after the formal FP2020 partnership ends.
Young civil society members in TZ are hoping FP2020 will help us create a space where they can work to advance programs. We want to hear from you. We want you to tell us where you need us. 
[ Session 1.4] Challenges posed by Julia Bunting–
How do we support civil society in the full set of roles that they play in supporting FP2020 (advocacy, service delivery, capacity building, accountability)?
How do we support local civil society partners to transfer knowledge of global movements to local partners and translate that into local actions?
How do we draw on lessons where civil society have played an active role such as in Tanzania and transfer those experiences to other countries where civil society has not played as active a role.

13. Agreed actions – Country Reflections- Not Vetted
Ensuring global processes are structured to be driven by and responsive to country needs (FP2020, GFF, PMNCH)
India – Challenge: Data – what do we do with it. Countries need to have the capacity to analyze data in the country context and tell them what is new, what is doable and what can be left aside. As a global community we are too often pointing out what is wrong versus celebrating what has been done. Help us determine what realistically can be done and what innovation can we bring to really make change.
Niger – Data alignment and differences between nationally collected numbers and UN or international numbers. How we resolve this issues and ensure the use of locally developed number. Raised the issue of moving from pilot programs to scale up. Where are the resources when we have identified that something works and we want to take it to scale? There is a need for efforts to be better coordinated from here – FP2020, Urban reproductive health, SWEDD. We can’t expect the country government to coordinate these efforts.
DRC - Recommendation – lobby for more fundraising, both for the public sector but also the private sector to provide technical assistance. We would like you to help us organize a public – private sector roundtable. We need business cases to help us mobilize resources and also to identify where to invest resources. Coordination needed between FP2020 and other mechanisms/platforms that are there. We need to commend the secretariat and continue to engage the focal points and help us to spread the good practices beyond the focal points to help us learn what has worked elsewhere and to implement it in our country. We also want more opportunities to interact and learn from our neighboring countries.
Philippines – We need to ensure that we have the capability to use available data to assess how we are doing, and also to assess which programs are working and which are not. Looking for innovative financing and technical expertise mechanisms but we also want to not just be dependent but also to be an integral part of moving this forward.

14. Agreed actions – Country Reflections – not vetted
Ensuring global processes are structured to be driven by and responsive to country needs (FP2020, GFF, PMNCH)
Nigeria -
Data - Request that Track20 assist with improvement of the Smart Survey implementation.
Advocacy – We need sustained advocacy at multiple tiers of government for family planning
Youth - ?
GFF – Looking to the GFF for RH and Nutrition. Looking at our health plan II as the basis for the investment case.
FP basket financing – We see the financing gap and we need the support of development partners to help us to fill this gap.
Coordination and Integration – calls on the FP2020 partners to support the coordination and integration of services so that we can provide a broad range of support.
Tanzania – Data – We need to use data better to monitor our progress and track our expenses, and understand what works for youth. We need to ensure that young people – boys and girls, in school out of school, married and unmarried. Global partnership and accountability – how do we find harmonization at a country level between different platforms. F

15. Final Reflections – need work
Recommendation – Looking at data – how do we move from what we saw today from Emily and move from that to a set of country by country recommendations to the reference group and countries
Great value of having the data but this time having the countries and representation at the highest levels has made for a fantastic meeting. We have made great strides in talking about youth since we started discussing in India. Finally we are making a great contribution to the global development agenda and need to keep the