There have been a lot of problems and misconceptions surrounding menstruation in developing countries, particularly in Nigeria. Even when everyone can agree that menstrual hygiene management amongst adolescent girls and women in marginalized areas is very poor from the lack of modern facilities, there is an inability to implement a strategy that addresses this. In tackling this issue, PHAAE adopted the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA).

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.

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…]

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.

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]

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…]