The current interest in revitalizing family planning (FP) programs puts increased attention on the estimation of resource needs, especially those that are financial. While estimates of the potential for expansion of service uptake have been made and are reasonably reliable, estimating the costs of such expansion are more challenging. While there have been many family planning cost studies and several estimates of program costs, many of these are either old or rely on old data. Moreover, there are inconsistencies in methodologies used making comparisons difficult.

This report addresses issues related to methods of estimating family planning program costs. Such estimates have been used by government officials to plan national and sub-national budgets, by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and donors to determine levels of donor support at all levels, and used for advocacy purposes at all levels to highlight shortfalls in funding or to put FP costs into perspective for various audiences. This paper will examine a variety of models and studies that represent this range of audiences and purposes.
 
To develop recommendations for costing family planning programs, the MEASURE Evaluation Population and Reproductive Health (PRH) associate award project convened a meeting of international experts composed of donors, international cooperating agencies, and others working in the field.
 
As background documents for the meeting, two papers were commissioned. The meeting reviewed the current state-of-the-art of costing tools, discussed the kinds and levels of cost information that is desirable, and made recommendations for standards and methods for measuring the costs of family planning programs.

This report reflects a summary of the discussion that took place during the Expert Group Meeting as well as some of the issues raised by the background papers.