The Global Alliance for Pre-Service Education (GAPS) is an online community of practice aimed at strengthening pre-service education in family planning and reproductive health; it is supported by the Capacity Project in collaboration with the WHO and IBP Consortium.

Moderated by the Capacity Project team, the GAPS website (http://my.ibpinitiative.org/gap) contains resources and serves as a forum for guided discussions. The team has completed the three planned fora: basic principles related to competencies and competency-based education; specific family planning competencies; and challenges and best practices in educating students using competency-based educational principles. In an analysis of the most recent forum, the team found “overwhelming gaps between what students are taught in the classroom and what they see in the clinical settings.” Participants contributed a range of promising strategies.

Although the planned fora are completed, GAPS remains active. For example, 70 participants from Ethiopia created a subforum and are using GAPS to address national pre-service strengthening initiatives.

June 2008