Social marketing of emergency contraception: Are we missing a valuable opportunity?

Globally, unmet need for family planning remains high, branded or franchised clinics, pharmacies or drug sellers or and in developed and developing countries alike, women and men face challenges accessing both accurate information about contraception and contraceptive supplies. Contraceptive social marketing programs offer creative, effective and successful strategies to provide reproductive health (RH) products and services around the world, particularly in developing countries. Yet, the peer-reviewed literature contains few evaluations of social marketing of contraceptives, and few evaluations of social marketing programs focused on emergency contraception (EC) exist. The term social marketing has a host of meanings, but here, we refer to the selling or promotion of RH products by a nonprofit and nongovernmental organization (NGO), generally in the developing world. There are many different social marketing approaches and programs, and different generations of social marketing programs have widely varying capacities. Accordingly, the sale of RH products (such as condoms, oral contraceptives and other contraceptive products) can take a number of forms. Often, social marketing organizations register, import and distribute the product either through commercial outlets or through