The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) is holding their 2009 National Conference from April 26-29 (halfway over, in other words!) in Bethesda, MD, and we direct many thanks to NFPRHA for including us among the bloggers invited to attend the conference.

The theme of this year's conference is Empowering the Majority: Expanding Access to Family Planning, and based on the sessions I attended today, the title's a great fit. The sessions I sat in on spanned coalition advocacy, contraception, and outreach to hard-to-reach populations, and each delivered practical solutions for maximizing quality of and access to family planning services. A few highlights:

• Yamelsie Rodriguez, Regional Director of Clinical Operations for Planned Parenthood of Illinois shared some very basic but unfortunately not-always-obvious tips for providing family planning services to Latinos (eg. recruit Spanish-speaking volunteers to help with paperwork and provide appointment confirmation in Spanish).

• Nurse Practioner Susan Wysocki offered a fact and fiction information session on Intrauterine contraception (IUC) including tips for maximizing communication with patients.

• Jackie Kendall of Midwest Academy highlighted the distinction between strategy and tactics in coalition building and emphasized the importance of creating a strategy that builds upon the strengths of the organizations involved and incorporates a variety of tactics drawing upon those strengths.

For more information on the conference visit NFPRHA's website (click here to view the events schedule). You can also check out feministing.com's blog post on today's opening panel, or you can follow the conference on Twitter under the hashtag #nfprhacon.

Stay tuned...