Niger

Meet Marguerite Diarra. She’s On a Mission to Train More Midwives and Increase Access to Maternal Care in Mali

cbales — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 11:47:15 +0000

Meet Marguerite Diarra. She’s On a Mission to Train More Midwives and Increase Access to Maternal Care in Mali cbales March 08, 2024

March 08, 2024

For International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating women like Marguerite who inspire us, and donors, to #InvestInWomen.

On a sunny morning at the Vicenta Maria School of Ségou in Mali, Marguerite Diarra demonstrates active management of the third stage of labor using a Mama-U, a training model representing a woman’s uterus after childbirth.

Marguerite is on a mission to produce more skilled midwives who are ready to care for women in Mali, particularly in rural communities. She grew up in Beleko, in the region of Dioila, and became a midwife in 2016. Now she’s a permanent teacher at the school, specializing in obstetrical care.

Mali doesn’t have nearly enough midwives.

Mali, like other countries in Francophone West Africa, doesn’t have nearly enough skilled midwives or other health workers. There are just 6.1 midwives, nurses, and doctors to serve 10,000 people, far below the recommended amount, and the shortage is even worse in rural areas. This hinders women’s equitable access to health services, including for maternal care and family planning, and contributes to high rates of maternal mortality.

More than 500 women die for every 100,000 live births in Mali. And, traditional preservice education has not prepared health workers for real-life work conditions.

IntraHealth’s Classroom to Care (C2C) project, funded by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, aids 12 private health schools like Vicenta Maria in adopting a Competency-Based Approach (CBA) to education.

The Competency-Based Approach to education is based on population needs.

Whereas classic preservice training involves developing programs by subject or objective, CBA programs are developed based on population needs and the needed competencies for job requirements. In classic training the teacher provides the knowledge, while CBA teaching is based on facilitating student learning.

C2C has trained 250 teachers like Marguerite across Mali, Niger, and Senegal on the CBA approach.

Photo by Amadou Iam Diallo for IntraHealth International.

“These trainings really helped me understand my role as a teacher, become aware of my shortcomings, and apply new skills,” she says. "Previously, teachers did everything, but with CBA, we learned to put the student at the forefront of their own education. It's up to students to take the lead, and the teacher to guide and direct them. This has changed our way of preparing and delivering lessons," Marguerite says. This new approach has made classes more interactive and beneficial for students.

"We emphasize practice, which is very important in their learning to become competent health workers."

Marguerite also supervises students in community health centers, reference health centers in each district, and Nianankoro Fomba Hospital. "I am responsible for positioning students and tracking their skills development. Occasionally we go on field visits, because we emphasize practice, which is very important in their learning to become competent health workers.”

The project found that many health schools were lacking the equipment they needed for students to practice and has already provided anatomical models and other teaching equipment for establishing skills labs at the schools.

“The skills lab will help us a lot,” says Marguerite. “We already have a lot of equipment compared to other schools, but there are still gaps. For example, we don’t have the equipment required to insert or remove an IUD, or for demonstrating to women how to conduct breast self-examinations. There are also mannequins that we don’t have, and we need them to prepare students for their field placement, so when they are providing direct care to patients, they know what to do.”

By the end of the five-year project, C2C aims to have 580 teachers across Mali, Niger, and Senegal trained on the CBA, 9,720 students benefiting from quality training, and a skills lab at each school.

Meanwhile the C2C is also focusing on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to increase the number of nursing and midwifery graduates, particularly women from marginalized communities. C2C conducted DEI situational analyses, and is using the results to develop school-specific plans that apply DEI best practices. to make all 12 partner schools more inclusive for women students and boost well-being and academic performance.

By Amadou Iam Diallo

Technical advisor for communications

By Carol Bales

Strategic communications manager

Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health Health workforce development Private-Sector Approaches International Women's Day Gender Equality Midwives Nurses Mali Niger Senegal

Is In The Media

Photo by Amadou Iam Diallo for IntraHealth International.

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In Francophone West Africa, 3,000 More Nursing and Midwifery Students Are Benefitting from Competency-Based Training Matching Local Needs

cbales — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 16:19:57 +0000

In Francophone West Africa, 3,000 More Nursing and Midwifery Students Are Benefitting from Competency-Based Training Matching Local Needs cbales November 20, 2023 November 20, 2023

IntraHealth is partnering with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited to improve maternal and child health in Mali, Senegal, and Niger by sustainably increasing the number of skilled nurses and midwives ready to serve rural communities.

Through the Classroom to Care (C2C) project, funded by Takeda's Global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Program, IntraHealth International is improving access to high-quality maternal and child health care in Mali, Niger, and Senegal by strengthening the preservice training of nurses and midwives in 12 private health schools. Now at the end of the second year of the project, more than 3,000 nursing and midwifery students—75% of whom are women—are benefiting from updated curricula adapted to local clinical practice.

The project is responding to several pressing issues. There is a critical shortage of health workers (nurses, midwives, and doctors) available in the three countries, with only 6.1 health workers in Mali, 3.9 health workers in Niger, and 4.3 health workers in Senegal for every 10,000 people. The shortage is even more acute in rural areas. Currently, traditional preservice education curricula have not prepared health workers for real-life work conditions, and many health training institutions are inadequately equipped and unaccredited. Furthermore, women are disproportionally disadvantaged when it comes to enrollment and graduation due to a variety of factors, such as family responsibilities. Discrimination against women and gender inequalities directly impede development of the health workforce to provide equitable and accessible health services.

Meanwhile the maternal mortality rate remains very high in the three countries, with 315 deaths per 100,000 live births in Senegal, and more than 500 deaths per 100,000 live births in Mali and Niger. And in Mali and Niger, approximately 10% of children die before their fifth birthday.

Competency-Based Approach

Competency-focused preservice education is critical for the provision of high-quality maternal and child health services that meet local needs. Since 2006, the West African Health Organization (WAHO) has pushed to harmonize training curricula for nurses and midwives in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region that addresses current disease patterns as well as intra-regional migration. The curricula use a competency-based approach (CBA) that considers population and student needs to replace classic training. Many health schools in the region, however, have still not started the process of implementing the WAHO standardized curricula or been able to train a critical mass of teachers on CBA.

From 2017-2020, the USAID/Mali Human Resources for Health Strengthening Activity, led by IntraHealth, supported the use of competency-based curricula in 10 schools and strengthened policies and practices related to recruitment and retention of students, leading to improved performance of health workers.

The five-year C2C project builds on this work and supports four private schools in each country to strengthen preservice education of nurses and midwives through enhanced competency-based curricula; train teachers and others in the CBA, achieve the appropriate accreditations; and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to increase the number of nursing and midwifery graduates, particularly women from marginalized communities and vulnerable groups.

C2C partners with a diverse set of stakeholders, including WAHO, government bodies including the ministries of health and education in each country, government units such as the Human Resources Division and the Division for Mother and Child Health, private school associations, health professional associations, and Empower School of Health.

Preliminary results

C2C conducted an in-depth needs assessment to identify the baseline for each school, then developed capacity-building plans for all 12 schools to address gaps in national accreditation standards, purchased essential teaching equipment for competency labs, and digitized eLearning modules harmonized with the WAHO curricula.

At the end of Year 2, the project has:

Supported the development and validation of CBA teacher training documents at the national level, including a reference manual, trainer’s guide, and participant workbook.
Through updated CBA training programs, improved the skills and knowledge of 3,721 students, teachers, and school management staff:
- 398 teachers acquired skills and knowledge in adult teaching techniques.
- 250 teachers and clinical supervisors received training on competency-based curricula.
- 3,073 students (2,361 women) benefited from updated curriculum content with tools adapted to clinical practice.
Developed an Accreditation and Quality Assurance Roadmap for all three countries, established internal quality assurance and accreditation units in each school, and oriented 62 educational advisors on quality assurance—laying the groundwork for the accreditation process.
Digitized 33 maternal and child health teaching modules and developed an eLearning platform in collaboration with Empower School of Health. This platform is a comprehensive learning management system tailored to each country, and the modules cover topics such as pediatrics, anatomy, community health, and obstetrics. The eLearning platform incorporates DEI considerations in its design, audio and visual features, and mobile and offline options.
Established inter-ministerial technical working groups in the three countries and initiated a regional private sector community of peers and a community of practice on medical sciences training.

What’s next

C2C is currently conducting DEI situational analyses in all three countries, and in the next year will use them to develop school-specific DEI plans that apply DEI best practices, such as providing nurseries and lactation rooms, to make partner schools more inclusive for women students and boost well-being and academic performance.

C2C will launch the eLearning platform and over the next three years will expand the platform to also include management and leadership courses and solidify it as the standard in health care education across West Africa. C2C will ensure each partner school receives the necessary equipment and technical support to set up competency and computer laboratories. C2C will deepen engagement with stakeholders, from government bodies to local communities, ensuring that the project's impact is sustainable and far-reaching.

The project will also continue its Private Sector Community of Practice, strengthen public-private partnerships through the technical working groups, and oversee implementation of action plans in each school.

By the end of the project, C2C aims to have 580 teachers trained on the CBA, 9,720 students benefiting from quality training, and all 12 private health schools accredited.

Learn more about the Classroom to Care project in three short videos produced by IntraHealth’s Mali team for a virtual visit this month with Takeda.

Mali Niger Senegal Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health Education & Performance eLearning Private-Sector Approaches Midwives NursesPhoto by Amadou Iam Diallo for IntraHealth InternationalClassroom to Care: Training to Expand Access to Maternal and Child Health

How Do We Measure the Success of Integrated Health Services?

kseaton — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 15:06:08 +0000

How Do We Measure the Success of Integrated Health Services? kseaton December 10, 2021

December 10, 2021

Here's how our INSPiRE team in West Africa developed new indicators to monitor their progress toward more people-centered and efficient care.

Countries in West Africa have some of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. Women in this region face a 1 in 34 lifetime risk of maternal death and 34 of every 1,000 infants do not survive their first 28 days. An estimated 24% of women have an unmet need for family planning and only 1 in 5 women are accessing modern contraception.

Achieving universal health coverage—wherein all people have access to the health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship—would turn these numbers around. One way to get there, the World Health Organization says, is through client-centered services integration. This is a way of providing a package of health services during a single visit—such as family planning and nutrition services and maternal care and newborn/infant care. And while it’s more efficient for the client and for the facility, it also means families who have to travel great distances to a health facility are more likely to get all the care they need.

This is a great way to advance universal health coverage in countries where access to care remains a big challenge.

It was in response to these challenges that IntraHealth introduced the INSPiRE initiative. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, INSPiRE helps national governments in West Africa’s nine Ouagadougou Partnership countries integrate services for family planning, nutrition, and maternal, neonatal, and child health for women and their newborns. This way,

a mother who travels to the clinic for postnatal care with her newborn for a vaccination visit, for example, will also receive counseling about family planning and nutrition information, all in the same visit.

“We have adopted the service integration approach which has enabled us to meet the needs of our clients, especially in terms of family planning,” says Nebenhide Gamba Ouedraogo, a midwife at the Urbain Health Center in Burkina Faso. “It has improved the quality of care and allows us to further reduce missed opportunities which, in turn, improves our indicators.”

Delivering services as an integrated package avoids missed opportunities to provide critical, lifesaving services for mothers and newborns. Through four points of entry—antenatal care, delivery, postnatal care, and newborn care—mothers can receive services they might not have otherwise received.

“I really appreciated the fact that I came to weigh my child and the health worker took the opportunity to talk to me about family planning," says Felicia Kiboro, a client visiting the Niche Health Center in Burkina Faso for a well baby visit. "The health worker welcomes us. He takes good care of our children. He weighs them and gives us a lot of advice, especially on family planning. He also talks about COVID-19."

The INSPIRE model was introduced in 11 facilities across three flagship countries: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger. After two years, the preliminary results in these facilities have been promising:

Approximately 9 out of 10 pregnant women seeking antenatal care services benefited from the integrated care package including counseling on family planning and nutrition.
There was a 96% increase in the number of women adopting a family planning method immediately after delivery.
The facilities offering the integrated services noted an increase of 273% in women adopting a family planning method within six months of delivery in 2019 compared to 2018.
Overall, there was an 84% increase in the use of health services at facilities offering integrated services.

“Service providers are seeing remarkable progress in their center’s performance indicators thanks to improved family planning uptake and increased use of prenatal and postnatal services,” says Marguerite Ndour, INSPiRE’s project director. “This is a great way to advance universal health coverage in primary health care services in countries where access to care remains a big challenge and resources are limited to expand health structures.”

Measuring service integration is critical to monitoring progress but also to reinforcing provider behavior change in a sustainable way. In partnership with the Ministry of Health, INSPiRE helped develop indicators that measure service integration. This approach is a regional first, promising sustainable success.

In each country, composite indicators were developed for family planning, nutrition, and maternal, newborn, and child health. They were included in the national health information systems and in the facility-level data collection tools. At each visit, health workers are reminded to report on the services they delivered to their clients using data collection tools, which are then monitored at the district and the national level.

These new indicators provide useful data for decision-making as the integrated service model is implemented and scaled up nationally, but they also provide women and their families with sustainable access to a range of high-quality services that they haven’t had before.

Resources

Developing Composite Indicators for Integrated Family Planning; Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health; and Nutrition Services

By Jen Snell

Former senior technical manager

INSPiRE Family Planning & Reproductive Health Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health Universal Health Coverage Day Primary Health Care Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Niger

A health worker helps a mother and her baby at a health facility in Ouagadougou in 2017. Photo by Trevor Snapp for IntraHealth International.

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Cities in Francophone West Africa Add Over 350,000 Family Planning Users

kseaton — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 16:28:18 +0000

Cities in Francophone West Africa Add Over 350,000 Family Planning Users kseaton October 22, 2021 October 25, 2021

Over 350,000 new contraceptive users were added in 12 cities throughout francophone West Africa over the past five years. The Challenge Initiative’s (TCI) West Africa Hub, led by IntraHealth International, contributed to these results by working with local health systems, young people, religious and government leaders, and community health workers to increase access to family planning.

Since 2016, TCI’s francophone West Africa Hub has used a comprehensive approach to improve contraceptive use in five countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Niger. In partnership with municipalities and local health systems, the hub expands access to family planning by supporting the implementation of high impact interventions such as universal referral and post-partum family planning while also working to make those services more youth friendly. To create demand for services, the Hub supports local community-based organizations, youth ambassadors, and religious leaders to promote the benefits of family planning, dispel myths and rumors about contraception, and encourage male involvement in family planning decisions.

“We use high-impact interventions—including universal referral and free family planning days—to reach women and girls with critical family planning services,” says Hawa Talla, IntraHealth’s leader of TCI in West Africa. “And I’m so proud that we’ve been able to make sure they have access to family planning services and know their options when it comes to contraception.”

TCI cities in francophone West Africa have been able to increase access to family planning services with technical support from the Hub team. For example, the Hub developed a training manual and printed job aids for health workers to implement the universal referral intervention, an approach in which every woman of reproductive age who visits a health center is asked about her familiarity with and desire to use family planning. If she’s interested, she can receive services the same day. Over 2,300 health workers were trained on this approach in 910 health facilities. Because of this, over 1,670,000 women of reproductive age received family planning messages and the approach contributed to recruiting 46.8% of new family planning users.

“We’ve found that working with young people, religious leaders, community health workers, and others has helped change the way we talk about family planning in francophone West Africa,” says Talla. “It’s clear people now understand what family planning is and how to access it.”

TCI trained more than 600 young people on transformational leadership, advocacy, and how to participate in reproductive health and family planning programs. The young leaders developed and implemented advocacy plans and participated in family planning and reproductive health decision-making bodies in their regions. As a result of their advocacy, these young leaders also reduced the costs of family planning services, mobilized financial resources, and provided free coupons for family planning to increase access to sexual and reproductive health information, services, and products.

Government engagement is a key component of TCI’s approach and the West Africa Hub connected with mayors who invested in family planning programs and participated in health facility visits and meetings with health workers and youth leaders. Including mayors in local family planning efforts led to an increase in funding, initiatives, workshops, and community dialogues.

In Ziguinchor, Senegal, the health district, city hall, and municipal council members discussed the availability of grant funds, improving equipment and operations for health facilities, and building accommodations for health workers.
All 12 TCI-supported municipalities provided $330,000 to implement high-impact interventions in the cities.
In Koudougou, Burkina Faso, the mayor chaired a five-day workshop for TCI cities to establish joint family planning messages.
And in Benin, young leaders talked to local government officials who then made a commitment to fund vouchers. They advocated for 2,000 young people for the first phase of the program.

Local governments are also routinely assessing the management and sustainability of their family planning programs with the RAISE (Reflection and Action to Improve Self-Reliance and Effectiveness) tool introduced by TCI. Based on the results, they implement course correcting actions.

TCI also worked closely with local partners and officials in francophone West Africa to adjust in real time to COVID-19 by following a “business unusual” model, in which cities ensured sustained access to family planning in urban areas despite the pandemic for lasting and cost-efficient results. To do this, the Hub integrated family planning and infection prevention messages through their “I Choose” communications campaign (using testimonials from mayors, health workers, men, women, and adolescents on why they chose family planning), trained local health workers to help community members conduct home visits (decreasing congestion at health facilities), offered universal referrals, provided remote data collection and analysis coaching to city staff, and created opportunities for remote learning and exchange.

Throughout the last five years, TCI updated their website with helpful information and news. You can access all content here or read more:

TCI worked through four regional hubs, including the Francophone West Africa Hub, which is led by IntraHealth International and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health leads The Challenge Initiative. Two Hopkins-affiliated institutions, Jhpiego and the Center for Communication Programs, and the India office of Population Services International (PSI) also serve as in-country accelerator hubs.

Benin Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Niger Senegal Family Planning & Reproductive Health Community Health Youth Engagement The Challenge Initiative

New Program to Train More Student Nurses in Francophone West Africa, Bring Care to More Communities

kseaton — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 17:05:58 +0000

New Program to Train More Student Nurses in Francophone West Africa, Bring Care to More Communities kseaton September 16, 2021 September 22, 2021 Chapel Hill, NC

Through the new Classroom to Care project, IntraHealth International is partnering with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited and 12 private schools in Mali, Senegal, and Niger to sustainably increase the number of qualified, well-trained nurses who can serve rural communities in these countries—all of which face a critical shortage of health workers. Takeda announced this week that IntraHealth is one of the recipients of their 2021 Global CSR Program, which will fund this work.

IntraHealth and Takeda will work with four schools in each of the three countries over the course of five years, helping them partner effectively with the public sector, achieve the appropriate accreditations, enhance competency-based curricula, create effective learning approaches, and graduate students from underserved areas—all as part of our effort to ensure that everyone everywhere has the health care they need to thrive.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with Takeda to help solve the shortage of highly trained nurses in rural communities in Mali, Senegal, and Niger,” says Polly Dunford, president and CEO of IntraHealth. “This partnership will revolutionize the way health workers are trained at private nursing schools, improve health care in the communities that need it most, and draw more brilliant young students to the profession.”

IntraHealth has been working with health workers in West Africa for over four decades. In Mali, Niger, and Senegal, we’ve collaborated with government and civil society partners to help the health sector achieve national health workforce goals by strengthening health systems and the health workforce and increasing access to lifesaving maternal and child health, family planning and reproductive health, and nutrition services. Highlights include:

More health workers for rural Mali

In Mali, IntraHealth and the Ministry of Health developed a national training policy and strategy to help rural regions develop, manage, and retain their own health workers. For example, the Gao Nursing School, which IntraHealth has supported since it opened in 2001, is now responsible for graduating 89% of all the health workers in northern Mali.

“The school has added 1,681 midwives, nurses, and lab technicians to Mali’s health workforce,” says Cheick Touré, IntraHealth’s Mali country director. “It was such a successful program that USAID asked us to scale it up and we supported 10 more schools in other parts of the country.”

This new partnership with Takeda is an opportunity to scale up this successful approach in additional Sahel countries that are facing the same critical shortages of health workers in rural and underserved areas.

Integrated service delivery

As part of IntraHealth’s INSPiRE West Africa regional project, IntraHealth developed an integration model that includes health worker training curricula and job aids, data collection tools that reinforce integrated service delivery, and virtual and in-person mentoring and supervision.

After the model was introduced in Niger, immediate postpartum family planning increased by 96% in all INSPiRE-supported facilities in from 2018 to 2019.

Safe, home-based services during COVID-19

As part of The Challenge Initiative in Senegal, we’ve been training high-performing local health workers to coach community health workers and organize household visits, which help minimize large gatherings at health facilities during COVID-19. This also provides women who are unable or unwilling to visit a health center with family planning information, counseling, and infection-prevention guidance from a safe distance.

In collaboration with Takeda, IntraHealth will build on these experiences in the region to train more than 14,000 nursing students so they can provide high-quality health care to the clients in their communities and help schools continue to produce nursing graduates who can do so for generations to come.

IntraHealth will partner with Empower School of Health, a leading global digital learning and capacity-building organization, to develop an eLearning Management System and RMNCH learning modules to respond to project needs.

Mali Niger Senegal Education & Performance Gender Equality Health Workers Classroom to Care: Training to Expand Access to Maternal and Child Health

Assessing Application of WHO Global Standards For Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Five West African Countries

kmelton — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 18:18:34 +0000

Assessing Application of WHO Global Standards For Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Services in Five West African Countries 2021 kmelton June 21, 2021

This technical brief examines the results of the CS4FP Plus 2019 study of adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) service delivery in five West African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) and the degree to which ASRH service delivery in those countries aligns with the WHO/UNAIDS’s Global Standards for Quality Health Care Services for Adolescents. The brief also includes recommendations for policymakers and program planners in the five countries.

Download

Countries Côte d’Ivoire Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger

Projects Civil Society for Family Planning

Topics Family Planning & Reproductive Health Youth Engagement

By Cheick Oumar Touré, Moctar Diallo, Demba Traoré, Sujata Bijou

Francophone West Africa Adds 3.8 Million Family Planning Users

kseaton — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 16:27:36 +0000

Francophone West Africa Adds 3.8 Million Family Planning Users kseaton June 09, 2021 June 09, 2021

IntraHealth International’s Civil Society for Family Planning (CS4FP) project partnered with nine countries in francophone West Africa to add 3.8 million additional family planning users and doubled the number of women using modern contraceptives in the region.

For the past ten years, CS4FP has been working with strong, high-functioning civil society coalitions, young people, and religious and traditional leaders in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Togo (Ouagadougou Partnership countries) to collaborate with and advocate to governments to implement their national family planning costed implementation plans (CIPs). The IntraHealth team established and supported national coalitions in all nine Ouagadougou Partnership (OP) countries to unify and strengthen civil society and hold governments accountable for their family planning commitments.

And the project helped build a stronger, more coordinated civil society, which achieved several significant policy changes, including:

Free family planning services in Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo.
Integration of comprehensive sexual education in the national curriculum in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Niger, and Mauritania.
Amendment of the national family planning guidelines in all nine countries to allow community-based distribution of contraception.
Partnership with 285 active religious and traditional leaders and 589 youth ambassadors to raise awareness and break down cultural barriers to family planning.
Engagement with religious and traditional leaders and youth ambassadors in developing the CIPs in their respective countries.

The project’s success can be attributed to CS4FP’s efforts to support, coordinate, and strengthen civil society coalitions (and the civil society organizations they worked with), young people, and religious leaders.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)

CS4FP organized workshops for CSOs on good governance, advocacy, resource mobilization, and fundraising. The project also secured commitments from CSOs to join or create family planning coalitions and provided small-scale grants for family planning advocacy. As part of this effort, CSO coalitions engaged young people and religious and traditional leaders to help encourage family planning in their communities. They developed a governance charter, mobilized resources, and developed key strategies for the future.

And they mobilized resources to stay sustainable—for each $1 provided by CS4FP, the coalitions raised an additional $5 to support their family planning activities.

Youth Ambassadors

CS4FP worked as advocates with youth ambassador networks in every country to ensure that national family planning plans and policies reflected the needs and wants of young people.

To do this, the project trained young people on family planning, social media, strategic planning for community mobilization, and resource mobilization to encourage sustainability. Youth networks were active on social media and digital messaging platforms and wrote blog posts on the CS4FP website to share their personal experiences with their peers.

Many adult networks implemented campaigns in their communities to raise awareness and share information about youth-focused family planning activities. As part of the information-sharing effort, youth participated in intergenerational dialogues in their countries and built a regional network linked to the CSO coalitions. Young leaders also received small-scale grants for family planning promotion.

Religious and Traditional Leaders

The project also worked with religious and traditional leaders in all nine Ouagadougou Partnership countries to encourage family planning. Organized at regional levels through the Alliance des leaders Religieux et Traditionnels pour la Santé et le Développement en Afrique de l’Ouest (Alliance of Religious and Traditional Leaders for the Health and Development of West Africa) with CS4FP support, religious and traditional leaders in the nine Ouagadougou Partnership countries and Chad worked together to develop their family planning strategic plan for the next three years.

They participated in family planning workshops to discuss religious texts and the intersection of religion and family planning, and to dispel myths and misinformation about reproductive health. They then developed booklets with key family planning supportive messages and received small grants for advocacy and community mobilization.

CS4FP’s support to civil society coalitions, youth ambassadors, and religious and traditional leaders helped these groups to become well-versed in family planning advocacy and resource mobilization and allowed them to take more ownership to ensure their autonomy and continued success.

These actions helped the West Africa region exceed their FP2020 goals, the only region to do so. Now, there is greater unity and better collaboration among civil society organizations, youth, religious leaders, and Ministries of Health, which has led to more and sustainable family planning and reproductive health activities in francophone West Africa.

CS4FP was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Dutch Government through the Embassy in Benin.

Benin Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Senegal Togo Family Planning & Reproductive Health Community Health Youth Engagement Civil Society for Family Planning

Developing Composite Indicators for Integrated Family Planning; Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health; and Nutrition Services

kmelton — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 22:02:50 +0000

Developing Composite Indicators for Integrated Family Planning; Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health; and Nutrition Services 2020 kmelton January 04, 2021

IntraHealth's INSPiRE project is designed to catalyze a model of integrated service delivery—and associated performance indicators—into national policy and practice in francophone West Africa. This technical brief describes the development of composite indicators of FP/MNCH/N (family planning; maternal, newborn, and child health; and nutrition) integration for the project.

Download

Countries Benin Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Senegal Togo

Projects INSPiRE

Topics Family Planning & Reproductive Health Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health Nutrition

By Marguerite Ndour, Roy Jacobstein, Sujata Bijou

TCI’s Francophone West Africa Hub Holds Webinar on Improving Access to Family Planning Among Urban Poor

kseaton — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 14:29:23 +0000

TCI’s Francophone West Africa Hub Holds Webinar on Improving Access to Family Planning Among Urban Poor kseaton October 05, 2020 October 05, 2020

More than 70 program managers, government officials, coaches and staff from The Challenge Initiative (TCI) attended a webinar on Sept. 30, to learn about strategies to expand access to family planning among the urban poor in the Francophone West Africa (FWA) region. The webinar, which was presented in French and included English interpretation, kicked off with a brief introduction to TCI from Hawa Talla, TCI’s chief of party in FWA, before participants heard from Maria Ba, director of the Ouagadougou Partnership Coordinating Unit. After celebrating a decade of achievements in family planning in the region, Ba reflected on inequities in the use of modern contraceptive methods among women of reproductive age, highlighting persistent disparities between the poorest and richest quintiles and rural and urban populations. Ba noted promising opportunities to galvanize local governments and implementing partners to expand access to family planning through high-impact approaches, such as free services, postpartum family planning, and youth-friendly services.

The first panelist, Dr. Zombre Sanon Marcella Valérie, pediatrician and director of family health in Burkina Faso, shared her country’s comprehensive policy framework for family planning, which encompasses strategies to tackle demand generation, service delivery and access, commodities, an enabling environment, coordination, and monitoring and evaluation. Dr. Marcella Valérie then described the context of a decentralized system, where capacity to manage health programming has been transferred to municipalities and regions. In Burkina Faso, municipalities have an essential role to play in family planning, specifically in its resourcing, quality improvement for service delivery, and the implementation of high-impact approaches. Before closing, Dr. Marcella Valérie shared examples of how the country has adapted services as part of the nationwide response to COVID-19, including through the adaptation of counseling to address safety during the pandemic while continuing to ensure informed choice family planning counseling.

Participants then heard from Dr. Moukaila Tchagafou, the director of private sector and community engagement from Amplify-FP’s office in Togo. Dr. Tchagafou shared Amplify-FP’s ambitious strategy to reach more than 10 million women with modern contraceptives. Amplify-FP does this by working with the health system to scale high-impact approaches; mobilizing communities, donors and governments to fund FP programs; and ensuring service quality and coordinating with other partners. The project is leveraging task shifting to provide long-acting reversible contraceptives, postpartum family planning, and tailored services for adolescents and youth to reach their needs. Dr. Tchagafou echoed that Amplify-FP has also faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, noting the importance of leveraging community health workers to offer family planning services such as DMPA-SC in homes since many women are hesitant to go to health centers at this time.

Last but not least, participants heard from TCI’s country program manager in Benin, Hugues Gnahoui, who highlighted the challenging context in Francophone West Africa, citing barriers across health systems, as well as the economic, societal, and political levels. Despite these, Gnahoui shared how TCI’s deployment of coaches who work hand-in-hand with key stakeholders from the region’s health systems and municipalities to the community has allowed for the rapid scale up and adaptation of high-impact approaches, including universal referral, special FP days, household mapping, and young transformational leaders, among others. Finally, Gnahoui highlighted the critical role of strengthened collaboration and coordination among family planning and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health programs to ensure the sustainable institutionalization of high-impact approaches in Francophone West Africa.

To learn more about how the Ouagadougou Partnership, Amplify-FP, and TCI are partnering with the Burkinabe government and eight others across Francophone West Africa to expand access to family planning among the urban poor, watch the 75-minute webinar. Stay tuned for additional webinars in this series designed to share implementation guidance and how-to tips related to TCI’s high-impact practices.

This article originally appeared on tciurbanhealth.org on October 2, 2020. You can find it here.

Benin Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Guinea Mali Mauritania Niger Senegal Togo Family Planning & Reproductive HealthPhoto courtesy of The Challenge InitiativeThe Challenge Initiative

New Integrated Services Model Improves Access to Family Planning for Women in West Africa

cbishopp — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 17:57:12 +0000

New Integrated Services Model Improves Access to Family Planning for Women in West Africa cbishopp August 26, 2020 August 28, 2020

More women in West Africa now have greater access to a wide range of services during their visits to health facilities, thanks to a new integrated service delivery model created by IntraHealth International. Our new INSPiRE integration model helps women get the most out of each visit, including services for maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH); nutrition; and family planning.

As part of our work on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded INSPiRE project, IntraHealth and Burkina Faso-based partner IRSS assessed how family planning was being integrated into MNCH and nutrition programs in the nine countries of the Ouagadougou Partnership. The findings revealed some gaps, and the team worked with stakeholders from government, civil society, and nongovernmental organizations to develop a model to better coordinate and adapt service delivery to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of West African women and their children.

“Compartmentalization of care, low competencies of health workers, and the gap in health workforce and health protocols were the main barriers to integrating services,” says Marguerite Ndour, IntraHealth’s project director for INSPiRE. “We understood the need for a one-stop shop of integrated services.”

Immediate postpartum family planning increased by 96% in all INSPiRE-supported facilities in Burkina Faso and Niger from 2018 to 2019.

The INSPiRE integration model includes packages of MNCH, family planning, and nutrition services adapted to each level of the health system, including health worker training curricula and job aids, data collection tools that reinforce integrated service delivery, and virtual and in-person mentoring and supervision.

When implemented, the model increases the number of women who receive services and the range of services they receive during each visit. For example, a woman who comes in for a prenatal visit will also receive counseling on proper nutrition and her postpartum family planning options, creating opportunities to address her priority health needs. In this way, health services are more client-centered, offering women a full package of family planning, nutrition, and maternal health services all in one visit—saving time and money and resulting in a higher standard of care.

The model is getting results. Immediate postpartum family planning increased by 96% in all INSPiRE-supported facilities in Burkina Faso and Niger from 2018 to 2019. And 97% of women seen for a prenatal visit in an INSPiRE-supported facility in Burkina Faso also received family planning counseling.

“The INSPiRE model is a valuable practice,” Ndour says. “We hope to see more Ouagadougou Partnership countries adopting it at large scale—adapting policies and care guidelines for greater impact.”

IntraHealth’s work on the INSPiRE project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Check out the INSPiRE integrated service delivery model here.

Burkina Faso Côte d’Ivoire Niger Family Planning & Reproductive Health Maternal, Newborn, & Child Health NutritionFor many women in West Africa, a trip to the health facility involves traveling many miles from home. Now women can access more services during a single visit, thanks to the new integration model. Photo by Trevor Snapp for IntraHealth International.INSPiRE