On the 30th anniversary of the watershed International Conference on Population and Development, we reflect on recent influential shifts impacting family planning (FP) and the growing evidence base on the importance of investing in FP.

We describe the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Pathways to Progress for Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2024–2030, a forward-leaning framework that guides USAID’s family planning and reproductive health programs to help realize a world where ongoing improvements to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) contribute to longer, healthier, and more prosperous lives for all.

We also delineate the 3 evidence-based pathways to achieve that vision that operate at individual, systems, and societal levels:

Individuals have accurate information, skills, and ability to take action to achieve the highest attainable levels of SRH across their lifetime.

Health systems provide quality, accessible, and people-centered SRH care.

Local communities, organizations, institutions, and governments create and foster social norms and policies that support individuals to make and act on their own SRH decisions, free from violence, coercion, and discrimination.

The landmark 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) shifted the dominant rationale for family planning (FP) from a demographic context that centered concerns about rapid population growth to a human rights context that centered people’s dignity and rights.1 The ICPD Programme of Action has enduring relevance. On the 30th anniversary of ICPD (ICPD+30), the global community of FP stakeholders is still striving to meet individuals’ sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs while doing so using person-centered, rights-based approaches and measures of progress.

As members of the global FP community who work at the world’s largest bilateral donor in FP, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), we are taking the opportunity of ICPD+30 to consider what we have learned and where the field is headed. This commentary offers …