Fitri Putjuk, the longtime country representative for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs in Indonesia, has been honored with the Staff Practice Award for Excellence in International Public Health Practice from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Putjuk, who has worked for CCP for more than 25 years, is currently project director of the MyChoice project, an initiative designed to create a consumer-focused, consumer-driven approach to assist Indonesia in addressing its stagnating contraception prevalence rate, unmet need for modern contraception and a skewed method mix where long acting reversible contraceptives have fallen out of use.
“Fitri is a revered mentor to dozens of family planning professionals and a key confidant of national leaders in Indonesia, helping to reinvigorate its national family planning program and steer it toward a sustainable future,” says CCP’s Deputy Director Alice Payne Merritt, who oversees the Indonesia team. “Under her leadership and with her technical expertise, she has guided innovation in counseling guidelines, training and outreach as well as social behavior change calls to action in the mass media.”
In partnership with Indonesia’s National Population and Family Planning Board, BKKBN, CCP’s MyChoice developed a model to reach a new generation of family planning adopters and used a number of digital solutions for improving capacity of health workers and outreach volunteers, as well as direct outreach to women and their partners for family planning information and advice.
Under Putjuk’s leadership, a Balanced Counseling Strategy (BCS) app for family planning providers was developed. In the first year, 86 percent of clients receiving counseling by providers trained on the app adopted a family planning method and 37.2 percent of those who adopted a method adopted an implant or IUD. Three times as many people stopped using their new methods when they were not counseled by those using the app.
My Choice also created the Skata digital platform reach consumers directly with family planning information, resources, quizzes and more. Skata (meaning to decide as one) was designed to reach women and their partners with correct information provided in a user-friendly. Skata has both an app and mobile website with articles, videos, graphics, infographics and simulations for planning your children.
Since Skata was created, the website has had 3.5 million page views, the app was downloaded 80,000 times, there have been more than 12 million social media impressions and 1,780 field workers (supporting 80,000 health volunteers) took e-learning courses.
This award culminates a long career dedicated improving the lives of Indonesian women and their families.
“Fitri has dedicated her life to improving family planning and reproductive health in Indonesia whether it was designing the first public-private partnership for family planning in Indonesia that resulted in more than 70 percent of family planning services being provided by the private sector, a feat that continues today, or designing programs using the latest digital technology,” says Robert Ainslie, senior technical advisor for CCP in Indonesia.
“Her success and the success of her programs are due to the relationships that she builds with her partners, and they are long lasting relationships that continue to open doors to people ready to listen and partner together. She really is one that does not take no for an answer.”
