It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.

I would like to see policy makers and international donor agencies realize that it is not enough to give money for demonstration projects. From the very beginning plans should be made for the scaling-up of successful innovations.

High level policy makers and program managers do not normally listen to the voices of local people, local providers and local program managers when they make decisions about contraceptive introduction or other aspects of program development in reproductive health.

We hope to organize team residencies and a conference bringing together professionals from Latin America and from other groups around the world who are also focusing on this issue. We want to bring them together so we can learn from each other, and then widely publicize our conclusions.

If I can give a very substantial injection of humanistic thinking into corporations, boy, that would change things a lot.

If instead policy makers and program managers participate in an interdisciplinary assessment team, make informal visits to local families and have in-depth conversations with local providers and health authorities, the real needs and complex challenges of organizing good reproductive health services become apparent.The first country that implemented this participatory program of assessment, research and policy development was Brazil. I was one of the outsiders who provided support to the initiative.

If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.