Blog reflects on London Summit on Family Planning

Noting that a "thin place" is "a place or situation that Celtic Mystics believed to be a coming together of heaven and earth," Gary Darmstadt, head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Family Health Division, and Wendy Prosser, a research analyst with the Family Health Division, write in the foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, "The London Summit on Family Planning was a 'thin place' for the global health community and for millions of women around the world who want to plan their families. It was transformational for so many reasons." They continue, "The Summit brought family planning back into the mainstream of global health conversations, a place it hasn't been in decades. And it put the focus of that conversation on women and what they want -- voluntary access to contraceptives and the ability to plan their families and their futures" (8/29).