Central to the ongoing debate surrounding rights-based family planning measures is the need for a woman-centered paradigm. Despite this debate, in the 30 years since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, widely used family planning measures have evolved relatively slowly. In this paper, we describe the utilization of an understudied family planning indicator—women’s expressed intention to use (ITU) contraceptives—and explore its implications for developing metrics, tracking program impact, and mechanistic understanding. We leverage Performance Monitoring for Action program data in ten geographies and assess, (1) cross-sectionally, the extent to which ITU captures demand and concords with ‘unmet need’ and (2) longitudinally, the extent to which women actualize their ITU over time. We demonstrate that the utilization of ITU more accurately identifies women who have demand and who are (un) able to actualize their ITU. We also discuss the limitations of the current ITU metric, making recommendations for data efforts to improve and include ITU as routinely reported family planning indicators.
