Saving Lives at Birth Starts with Quality Care, Everywhere
This blog was originally posted on the Global Health Now website. After decades of effort by the global health community and governments, more women are giving birth in health facilities than ever, and maternal and newborn mortality have declined since 1990. But global and country-level averages hide a tragic, more complex story: Even in countries [more…]
Help! I’m hiring new staff and I want them to work adaptively!
USAID LEARN released a new guide for hiring adaptive employees. This visual and user-friendly tool will help increase your chances of selecting staff skilled in adaptive management. Evidence shows that teams that apply more data-driven and adaptive leadership practices perform better than those that focus less on these practices.
Identifying and Treating Gestational Diabetes Among Women Living with HIV in Ethiopia
This blog was originally posted on the Maternal Health Task Force website. Gestational diabetes may be a neglected contributor to the continuing high rates of maternal and neonatal mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Without proper care, gestational diabetes—high blood sugar that is detected during pregnancy (and can include previously undetected pre-pregnancy diabetes)—increases the risk of eclampsia, [more…]
Looking Beyond 2020: A Roadmap for Family Planning
FP2020 aimed high with a goal of enabling 120 million more women and girls in the world’s 69 poorest countries to use safe and voluntary family planning by 2020. In the face of declining foreign assistance and funding for family planning, we need to secure political and financial commitment to sustain and build upon the significant gains we’ve made since 2012.
Engaged Youth in Arusha, Tanzania, Start TCI Club to Help Ensure a Healthy Future
This blog was originally posted on The Challenge Initiative website. The Challenge Initiative—implemented in Tanzania as Tupange Pamoja—encourages active participation of adolescents and youth in the design of health programming, including programs related to contraception and healthy futures. Recently, the Tupange Pamoja team met with students at Tumaini University in Arusha to talk about reproductive [more…]
Nothing is Free: The Emergent Role of Health Insurance as Donor Funding Declines
This blog was originally posted on the Health Policy Plus website. For many low- and middle-income countries, donor funding is needed to directly support access to “free” health services, such as family planning and HIV, in public facilities. At the recent Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) meeting in Ethiopia, while talking about insurance integration as a [more…]
Enhanced Supervision Approaches: Key to High-Quality Health Services
People drive health systems. I think a lot about health worker performance and productivity in my work with the HRH2030 Program. After all, a health system’s strength—and ultimately the health of any population—depends upon the strength of its health workforce. However, too often health workers are not very well supported, under-resourced, and poorly managed at [more…]
If the Journey to Self-Reliance is to Succeed, We Need to Strengthen Local Capacity to Collaborate, Learn, and Adapt
This blog was originally published on the USAID Learning Lab website. USAID’s approach to development – the Journey to Self-Reliance – focuses our collective efforts on building the capacity and commitment of partner countries to lead their own development. As Administrator Mark Green has said, “the purpose of foreign assistance should be ending its need [more…]
Understanding the Resiliency of Maternal and Child Health Services in Latin America after the Zika Outbreak
This blog was originally published on the Health Research Program website. The Zika outbreak greatly affected several Latin American and Caribbean countries to the extent that the World Health Organization declared it an international public health emergency on February 1, 2016. USAID is assessing the extent to which the outbreak affected Maternal, Newborn and Child [more…]
Organizational transformation starts at the top!
Leaders often face challenges and pressures that may prevent them from taking the necessary actions for organizational change. Chief executives in the public sector can be especially vulnerable when powerful unions and political maneuverings make change risky. No wonder leaders are hesitant to embark on such a perilous journey. There are many frameworks and tools [more…]