Spring 2016 Global Health Practitioner Conference | Wednesday, May 18

PLENARY

Emerging Global Opportunities
Lisa M. Hilmi, CORE Group; Lee Losey, CORE Group Polio Project, Catholic Relief Services

Conference attendees learned about new opportunities for CORE Group Members and partners, as well as updates on current collaborations.

Partnership as an Emerging Global Opportunity_HILMI

NEW INFORMATION CIRCUITS

TABLE 1 | The Future for Data Driven Program Improvement: DHIS2
Hosted by: Dora Curry

The software DHIS2 is the emerging standard among systems for collecting, managing and utilizing data in development programming, used by over 60 countries and over 50 international NGOs and donors including PEPFAR, CDC, WHO, UNAIDS, UNICEF and Global Fund. As open-source software with an extensive global community for support andinnovation, the basic design of DHIS2 prioritizes data utilization at the district and community levels, empowerment and accessibility for the end user, and building south-to-south leadership and expertise. Participants learned who’s doing what using this platform, and explored the possibilities.

TABLE 2 | Community-led Complementary Feeding and Learning Sessions (CCFLS)
Hosted by: Mary Mpinda and Ana Maria Ferraz de Campos, Catholic Relief Services

CCFLS is an under-nutrition preventive approach targeting children under-2 and pregnant women and lactating women, which has been adapted from PD/Hearth by Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Implementation and training manuals to support the roll-out of this community-led participatory approach were shared at this table. CRS has been implementing this approach in three countries (Malawi, Zambia, and Madagascar) with positive results since 2007. The approach easily links with agriculture and provides opportunities for effective integration with other sectoral interventions such as water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), agriculture, microfinance and early childhood development. It is adaptable insituations of drought or food insecurity, and the target group maybe expanded for all children under-5.

TABLE 3 | Curriculum Materials for Engaging  Caregivers in Early Child Development and The Homecare Plan: A Tool for Monitoring Community Health Volunteer Activities at the Household Level
Hosted by: Setungoane Letsatsi-Kojoana and Everlyn K. Matiri, Catholic Relief Services

Catholic Relief Services has developed a series of curricula materials for family caregivers and caregivers working with children 0-5 years in preschools.These materials include essential early childhood development (ECD) topics that include health, nutrition and child protection to ensure holistic child development. In a context where resources are very limited, the curricula has proven to be useful in providing the much needed guidance to caregivers both at household and pre-school settings and has been used widely by different ECD stakeholders to scale up the messages on early childhood. This circuit table will share some of the experiences of rolling out the curriculum for potential replication in similar contexts. The Homecare Plan: A Tool for Monitoring Community Health Volunteer Activities – CRS has been implementing the THRIVE project, an ECD project targeting children of 0-5 years, since 2012. The THRIVE project builds the capacity of caregivers, community health volunteers (CHVs) and other practitioners to ensure that children thrive in a sustainable cultureof positive parenting, care, stimulation and support. In order to ensure that caregivers are reached with key ECD messages, the project works with CHVs who visit caregivers in their households to deliver these messages. CHVs are expected to fill in a summary form every end of the month with information regarding the household visits. It was noted that some CHVs, however, were not visiting the households but would fill out their monthly summary forms showing that they had visited all their caregivers. The project then adopted the home care plan book to better track the CHV activities.

TABLE 4 | If These Walls Could Talk: Couples’ Functionality Assessment Toolkit & Links to Development in Southern Malawi
Hosted by: Angela Tavares, Catholic Relief Services

While couple relationship quality and functionality are believed to be linked to a wide range of health and development outcomes in low resource settings, few tools to assess couple relationships have been validated in this context. In Africa there is little research on couple relationship quality which is linked to development indicators. Catholic Relief Services has developed the Couple Functionality Assessment Tool (CFAT) and validated it in a rural population in southernMalawi. The CFAT showed validity in this population, and findings suggest that strengthening couple relationship quality may support behaviors which are critical to household health and development.The CFAT is a simple survey tool that will allow projects which target the enhancement of couple functionality for the purpose of improving development outcomes to capture valid and reliable data on relationship quality. Participants who are program designers and managers gained a greater understanding of the importance of measuring couple relationship quality in order to achieve development outcomes and everyone had a hands-on experience with using this toolkit.

TABLE 5 | Transforming Gender Norms for Improved Food Security and Nutrition
Hosted by: Jennifer Nielsen, Hellen Keller International

Are you convinced that transforming the roles of women and men in agriculture and child care is essential to improved health, nutritional status, well-being and prosperity, but are unsure how to get there? Helen Keller International (HKI) has an approach and some lessons learned from Asia and Africa that may help. Jennifer Nielsen and Sheela Sinharoy presented HKI’s Nurturing Connections© curriculum, developed in 2013, which uses community-based, participatory learning to lead communities to challenge the gender inequalities that undermine food security and nutrition and begin- to change community norms. The curriculum helps wives, husbands, and community elders work separately and then together to identify harmful stereotypes, build negotiation skills, and try new ways of shared decision-making within the household. By creating a community-level experience, the process helps build long-term change. It has been extensively tested in HKI projects in Bangladesh and has been adapted (in collaboration with the International Center for Research on Women) as “Cultivons les Relations” in West Africa. The presenters explained how the program works and what the action research has found to date. Participants became familiar with a new tool and how it might be integrated into their own nutrition-food security interventions.

TABLE 6 | Expanding Essential WASH Actions
Hosted by: Renuka Bery, FHI 360

With growing recognition of the role of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in achieving nutrition and growth out- comes, a set of Essential Hygiene Actions has emerged to facilitate integrated programming. Currently, these Essential Hygiene Actions focus generally on handwashing and corresponding support materials are limited. Integration advocates are exploring a more comprehensive menu of Essential WASH Actions that includes safe water, feces disposal, as well as multiple aspects of hygiene, elaborated by age cohorts, corresponding to Essential Nutrition Actions for the First 1000 Days.The expanded Essential WASH Actions propose feasible,effective behaviors,with relevant detail to incorporate into behavior-centered programming, and focused capacity building materials to complement the Essential Nutrition Action resources.These resources will serve as practical guidance for implementers and improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness of integrating WASH into nutrition and food security programming.This circuit table introduced theEssential WASH Actions elements, and elicited feedback on the draft tools to date to then incorporate into future iterations of the Essential WASH Actions package.

TABLE 7 | Getting It Right: Designing Context-Appropriate Nutrition Programs
Hosted by: Kristen Cashin, FANTA, FHI 360

This circuit table introduced participants to the updated Nutrition Program Design Assistant (NPDA), a tool that helps teams design the nutrition component of community-based maternal and child health, food security, or other development programs.The NPDA reference guide and accompanying workbook provide updated technical information and walk users through conducting a nutrition situation analysis, developing program goals and objectives, mapping health and nutrition services and policies, and selecting the most appropriate interventions and approaches for a program’s objectives, target population,  and geographic area.The session will include a discussion of key concepts in the guide and the essential information and steps in designing a nutrition program. Participants udnerstood of the purpose of the NPDA tool and how to use it – including key information needed and the key steps in applying that context specific information to nutrition program design.

TABLE 8 | Saving the Rain Forest with a Stethoscope
Hosted by: Kinari Webb, Health In Harmony

The destruction of forest areas is an ongoing threat to global environmental health. Health In Harmony, founded in 2005, works with communities on the ground to conserve the rainforests through initiatives suggested and guided by the communities themselves. This innovative program was launched as simply a process of listening: in 400 hours of community meetings, Dr. Webb learned that the greatest need driving small-scale illegal logging was affordable and high-quality healthcare. So, in 2007, a subsidized clinic was established. The clinic works at the intersection of human and environmental health with an incentive system. People who live in villages that have verifiably ceased logging receive up to a 70% discount on healthcare – the less logging in the village, the higher the discount.The clinic also offers patients the opportunity to pay for healthcare services with non-cash means such as seedlings(used in reforestation), manure(used in sustainable farming), and handicrafts that are later sold in the US. Additionally, the clinic doctors are always learning; they work with volunteer physicians (mainly from the US) and engage in fellowships (funded by Health In Harmony) at the medical school of Yale University and Stanford University. Since the clinic opened its doors, community meetings have inspired a sustainable agriculture training program, a reforestation effort, a forest monitoring team, and, most recently, a chain-saw buy-back program for illegal loggers. Health In Harmony and its Indonesian partner ASRI approach health holistically, addressing the economic, social,and physical ailments faced by the community. This approach has led to a decrease in illegal logging from over 1350 households, logging down to just 180 individuals in eight years. Healthcare simultaneously dramatically improved. Linking human and environmental healthcare harmoniously and addressing them together leads to better outcomes for all. By radically listening to communities and addressing problems in an intertwined manner, dramatic successes can be achieved.

TABLE 9 | Adapting Traditional Community Health Worker Programs for an Increasingly Urbarn World
Hosted by: Sarah Shannon, Hesperian Health Guides

Historically most community health worker (CHW) programs operated in rural settings with communities that could be defined primarily geographically. As urbanization increases globally, the need for adapting the CHW model to urban settings has become imperative to addressing the changing health needs and demographics of an increasingly urban and migrant world. Urban CHW programs face unique challenges: greater population diversity with recent migrants from different places, increased mobility of households and destabilized housing, and larger numbers of women working outside the home, among others. Nonprofit organization Latino Health Access has successfully developed and sustained a CHW program working in the urban, poor, and heavily immigrant community of Santa Ana, California. They have created a blueprint of applying a “traditional” community health promoter model to an urban setting. “Recruiting the Heart, Training the Brain: The Work of Latino Health Access,” Hesperian’s just-published title, tells the story of Latino Health Access and provides practical strategies for adapting health promotion to work in any urban community. By focusing on culturally inclusive, peer-to-peer health education, major health problems including diabetes and obesity are being addressed and outcomes are improving using this innovative model.

TABLE 10 | GrowUp Smart: Building Future Reproductive Health via Puberty Education
Hosted by: Susan Igras, Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University

More than ever, very young adolescents (VYA) are emerging as a key age group to engage in sexual and reproductive health programming. Puberty presents a critical window of opportunity to intervene before most youth become sexually active and before gendered attitudes and behaviors with negative consequences become entrenched. The knowledge, attitudes, and skills acquired during this time set the stage for future relationships, communication with romantic partners, and self- care practices to prevent risky sexual behavior and unintended pregnancy. During this discussion, participants learned about the interactive GrowUp Smart puberty curriculum, a comprehensive resource package of facilitated and take-home materials to introduce VYA girls and boys, and their parents, to key concepts of puberty, fertility, sexuality, gender, and safe behav- iors. The curriculum is designed for youth-serving organizations to implement in collaboration with influential community stakeholders like teachers and schools, traditional and civic leaders, and health workers. Conversation focused on: 1) the program’s theoretical background and community-based learning approach; 2) the curriculum content and specific resources; and 3) results and lessons learned from the pilot in Rwanda. The session aimed to prepare participants to integrate the curriculum, in part or in whole, into your existing adolescent sexual and reproductive health ASRH programs to better reach VYAs as they enter a consequential and transformative period in their lives.

TABLE 11 | Being Oteka Together: Using the GREAT How-to Guide
Hosted by: Nana Apenem Dagadu, Institute for Reproductive Health, Georgetown University

Have you heard a bit about the GREAT Project and wondered what it was all about? Are you struggling to reach adolescents on issues related to gender norms, sexual and reproductive health, or gender-based violence (GBV) in an engaging way? This circuit table introduced GREAT’s newly launched How-to Guide, a six-chapter resource package with instructions and supporting materials and tools that provide direction to programs that want to implement GREAT as part of their own activities. The GREAT How-to Guide is written for NGOs with some experience in community-based development but can be adapted in new settings. Specifically, participants: 1) were oriented to the intervention’s theoretical background and content in the areas of gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence prevention; 2) learned about results from the pilot phase; and 3) used an overview of the chapters to work through a participatory exercise with fellow session participants. This session prepared participants to design a concrete adolescent sexual and reproductive health programming work plan based on a proven intervention which will ultimately help reach both boys and girls throughout their lives.

TABLE 12 | It Begins with a Smile: Applying Human Centered Design to the Community Health Policy Process in Mbeya, Tanzania
Hosted by: Tanvi Pandit-Rajani and Kim Farnham, Advancing Partners and Communities Project, John Snow Inc.

In 2015, the Government of Tanzania launched a process to design a new community-based health program, including creating a new cadre of professional community health workers. To support implementation of the new strategy and program, The Advancing Partners and Communities (APC) and Community Health Systems Strengthening (CHSS) Projects partnered with the firm, Matchboxology to pilot a human centered design approach to identify key areas for policy attention and develop a district implementation plan to serve as a “prototype” for other districts in the country. Findings revealed important considerations for CHW training tuition costs, CHW deployment and retention, scope of practice, among others. Furthermore, the process led to an appreciation of and new perspectives on various actors working within the health system. Recommendations to address existing policy gaps are currently being considered by the national level CHW Taskforce in Tanzania. Participants in this session were introduced to the work in Tanzania through a participatory exercise linking policy to service delivery, followed by a short video of the human centered design approach used in country. Key objectives for this session were to: 1) introduce some of the challenges of Community Health Policy implementation through a human-centered design approach, 2) showcase the application of HCD for policy development.

TABLE 13 | mHealth System Strengthening for Improved Community Case Management and Surveillance of Malaria, Pneumonia, and Diarrhea in Mozambique
Hosted by: Karin Kallander, Malaria Consortium

Under a 2012 grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Malaria Consortium in collaboration with London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and University College London, developed an innovative mHealth package for community health workers (CHWs), locally referred to as Agentes Polivalentes Elementares, or APEs, in Mozambique which aimed at improving supervision, motivation, and increasing quality of care given to sick children with malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea. Under this project, named inSCALE, an opportunity was provided to explore the potential impact of technology solutions for quality of case management provided at community level when implemented in a national health system. The intervention was evaluated with a total of 132 APEs and 47 supervisors in six of the 12 districts of Inhambane province. The other 6 are being used as control districts. In 2016, at the Ministry of Health’s request, UNICEF and Malaria Consortium will use DFID funding to expand the scope of content of the APE CommCare app to align with the revised APE curriculum, and to bridge the system with the District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2). The ultimate goal is to improve the delivery of quality services from APEs by creating an mHealth system strengthening (mHeSS) platform with focus on service delivery and referral, along with strong supervision and performance quality assurance – all essential components of an effective health system. The presentation shared findings from the project and discuss these within the wider context of the challenges of implementing iCCM at scale.

TABLE 14 | Medic Mobile for Android: Building a Better Application for Community Health Workers (CHWs)
Hosted by: Sharon Langevin, Medic Mobile

The product team at Medic Mobile has built a new Android app designed for community health workers and it is in the middle of its first deployment. Community health workers provide care for neighbors at the most critical times. They also serve as proactive agents of change in their communities. Medic Mobile for Android was designed for a new wave of community health workers and integrated health systems. The new app provides an automated, prioritized list of upcom- ing tasks. In the app, CHWs are guided through actions — such as screening for high-risk pregnancies or diagnosing and providing treatments for children. It also shows progress towards their goals, and allows remote health workers to com- municate with contacts and central support teams. Over the past year, Medic Mobile has worked with the Living Goods team and community health promoters in Uganda to identify important features, design and test the user experience and user interface, and configure the application for an initial deployment. The Living Goods app will support their high-impact model being replicated in multiple countries. Medic Mobile is also deploying the application in West Africa by June 2016. Medic Mobile for Android is an offline web app with an Android container, delivering the benefits of the web and a native app. This circuit table demoed both the mobile application and the web application to participants and talk in more detail about our design and development process for the application. Additionally, Medic Mobile shared details about the progress of the ongoing deployment with Living Goods and its partner in West Africa. CHWs deserve new and better technology tools to support their work and this table presented one example.

TABLE 15 | Prioritizing the Maternal & Newborn Health Agenda through Advocacy
Hosted by: Arif Noor, Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps has been working in Pakistan since 1986 and is actively engaged in maternal, newborn and child health programming. Through support from the Research and Advocacy Fund, Mercy Corps has worked closely with national, provincial, and district actors to influence policy change with respect to 2 life-saving maternal and newborn drugs. The pathway for policy change was enabled through the facilitation of multi-stakeholder forums at the district and provincial level, complemented by targeted advocacy efforts with national level stakeholders. Misoprostol is now included in province-specific essential drug lists, clinical protocols in community and facility settings have been endorsed by provincial health departments and, the training curriculum for nurses and community based providers has been revised to include misoprostol delivery. Clinical guidelines for multiple applications of chlorhexidine have been approved by provincial health departments, chlorhexidine is now included in the essential drug lists and purchase list of the District Health Offices, and it is included in community midwife birthing kits and Lady Health Worker’s service lists. Specific steps included: 1) Advocacy with key stakeholders; 2) Identification of champions within the provincial health departments; 3) Prioritization of relationship building and follow-up; 4) Use of multi-stakeholder forums; 5) Enabled policy environment to promote the use of Chlorhexidine for umbilical cord care & Misoprostol for preventing Postpartum Hemorrhage.

TABLE 16 | Fixing the Internet of Broken Things in Global Health
Hosted by: Evan Thomas, Portland State University

At Portland State University, the SweetLab develops and implements remotely accessible instrumented monitoring technologies designed to improve the collection of effectiveness evidence in global health programs, including monitoring the performance and adoption of high efficiency cook stoves, water pumps, household water filters, sanitation systems, pedestrian footbridges, and other developing world appropriate technologies. Standard approaches for evaluating global health interventions, including methods used within randomized controlled trials, often rely on surveys and observations. These methods have known limitations including infrequent data collection, respondent bias, and reactivity. Cellular reporting instrumentation installed in households and communities can more objectively measure and incentivize healthy behaviors, and tie implementer incentives to performance.

TABLE 17 | Count Me In: An App with Customized Feeding Solutions for Vulnerable Children
Hosted by: Maureen Dykinga, CCC-SLP; Jon Baldivieso, SPOON Foundation

SPOON Foundation is creating an online solution to serve individual children living without permanent families, and children with disabilities by tracking their growth and nutrition and offering highly customized recommendations to promote optimal development. It also assesses the feeding techniques of caregivers and provides real-time feedback on improving technique and practices. Its primary focus is aiding healthcare workers to quickly assess a child and his or her caregiver, to detect problems, and to respond with detailed, specific, multimedia content. Institution supervisors, international partners, and government overseers also benefit from detailed reports and emailed alerts showing problem areas, trends over time, and point-in-time summary information at the child, site or community, or regional level. At this table participants gained a new understanding of the benefits of customizing and integrating interventions for feeding and nutrition issues for children with disabilities and young children living outside of permanent care.

TABLE 18 | Community Video for Nutrition: Show and Tell to Learn about the Guide and Innovative Approach
Hosted by: Kristina Granger, SPRING, The Manoff Group

Improving the agricultural and nutrition practices in lower and middle income countries can result in improved income, health, and well-being of millions of farming families. However, local languages, customs, and the variation of settings require context-specific approaches to social and behavior change communication efforts. Community video is a cost-effective intervention that enables community members to observe practices in their own geographical context, demonstrated in their own language and by someone of similar means. Seeing practices promoted by their neighbors, community members realize that they, too, have the means to implement them. SPRING and Digital Green have recently launched their Community Video for Nutrition Guide to help global agriculture and nutrition practitioners integrate community video for nutrition into their projects. The guide is based on experience implementing two proofs of concept in India and Niger over the past two years. This approach uses Digital Green’s video-based methodology, originally designed to promote improved agriculture behaviors, to specifically promote better nutrition and hygiene practices. Videos are shared among small community and women’s groups using portable Pico projectors. A robust suite of analytic tools, coupled with feedback from community members, provide program partners with timely data to better target the production and distribution of videos. During this session, participants were oriented to the guide as a resource and got a chance see the videos and equipment and experience how accessible the approach really is!

TABLE 19 | Newly Devised and Field-validated Modules for the Rapid Health Facility Assessment
Hosted by: Todd A. Nitkin, Medical Teams International

Medical Teams International (MTI), led by Dr. Todd A. Nitkin, has developed and added several new modules to the Rapid Health Facility Assessment originally offered to INGOs by USAID and MEASURE Evaluation to measure a set of key indicators for maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) services at the primary health care level. The new modules expand the key indicators to include the areas of Antenatal Care, Labor and Delivery, Immediate Postnatal Care, Emergency Obstetrics and Newborn Care (EmONC) Signal Functions, and EmONC Provider Competence. The modules were tested by MTI in Uganda, and also in collaboration with World Vision in Sierra Leone and Zambia. This work is in conjuction with the M&E Working Group.

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

LUNCHTIME SESSION

CORE Group Member Business Meeting

This meeting was for CORE Group Members to find out updates and opportunities about CORE. The meeting included a report from the Board of Directors and Executive Director, as well as discussion of important membership and fund development issues and opportunities.

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

A Call to Action: Aligning the Evaluation of Social and Behavior Change with the Realities of Implementation 
Joseph Petraglia, Pathfinder International; Janine Schooley, PCI; Chelsea Cooper, USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program, Jhpiego; Lenette Golding, Alive & Thrive, FHI 360

For the past year the CORE Group’s SBC Working Group has been exploring new and emerging ideas for M&E of SBC. During a one-day workshop at the 2015 Fall Conference, the group discussed whether behavior change evaluations as currently conceived can be responsive to the dynamic background in which interventions operate and looked at the needs and dynamics driving new trends in thinking for M&E of SBC. After the workshop, the organizers drafted a “Call to Action” encouraging implementers and donors to make evaluation more responsive to the contextual realities of implementation and then presented the paper at the International SBCC Summit. This panel synthesized the conversations to date and presented, “A Call to Action: Aligning the Evaluation of Social and Behavior Change with the Realities of Implementation.” The panelists include session leaders from the workshop and the Summit and a representative from USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program (MCSP).

By the end of this session, participants had:
• Provided an update of all the work that has been done and conversations that have occurred on this topic to date.
• Provided feedback to “A Call to Action: Aligning the Evaluation of Social and Behavior Change with the Realities of Implementation.”
• Discussed methods that integrate both qualitative and quantitative evidence in an iterative process, incorporating community participation, dialogue and ownership, two-way communication and feedback loops, while attending to gender and power relations and local social and cultural norms.

Complexity Matters: Aligning the Evaluation of Social and Behavior Change with the Realities of Implementation_PETRAGLIA

Call to Action – Complexity Matters: Aligning the Evaluation of Social and Behavior Change with the Realities of Implementation

Working with Governments: Experiences and Results from Recent CSHGP Projects
Ira Stollak, Curamericas Global; Susan Thompson, Health Alliance International; Rachel Hower, World Relief; Moderator: Melanie Morrow, USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program, ICF International

Three recent projects of USAID’s Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP) presented their experiences and results working with government and national programs in Rwanda, Guatemala and East Timor. Presentations were followed by a Q&A and open discussion.

By the end of this session, participants had:
• Heard results from three recent CSHGP projects.
• Learned about CSHGP experiences and what has worked well or not, in working with governments and integrating with national programs.
• Discussed their own experiences in working with governments and how they can use presented lessons in their work.

Partnership with MOH: Rwanda_HOWER

Creating an Equitable and Inclusive Rural Health System in Partnership with the Guatemala Ministry of Health_STOLLAK

Facilitation to Transform Meetings into Learning Opportunities
Shelia Jackson, The TOPS Program, CORE Group

Have you ever attended a meeting in which your organization or project was coming together to solve a problem? The group was going to brainstorm and decide on a path forward. You came to the meeting excited to share your ideas and were looking forward to learning your colleagues’ thoughts. But instead of a meeting in which everyone was given a chance to contribute, only one person talked and no ideas on how to solve the problem were discussed. You left the meeting feeling like you wasted your time because you were not heard and nothing was accomplished. There are two things that make a meeting successful: planning and facilitation. This session explored and practiced methods and techniques to plan and facilitate meetings where everyone’s voice is heard, learning is an expected outcome and next steps are formulated.

By the end of this session, participants had:
• Obtained the skills and experience to plan and facilitate participatory meetings.
• Gained the skills to incorporate learning into meetings.

Facilitation to Transform Meetings into Learning Opportunities_JACKSON

Developing Ministry Capacity and Partnerships for Sustainability and Scale
Julia Robinson, Health Alliance International; Mohammed Ali, Catholic Relief Services; Mary Anne Mercer, Health Alliance International; Paulina Bayiwasi, Ministry of Health, Ghana

International agencies that aim to improve health in resource-poor countries have recently become cognizant of the need to strengthen public sector health systems to produce sustainable and scalable improvements. NGOs working in health have a critical role to play, but are often constrained by relatively low levels of funding and the requirements of funders to produce measurable substantial results within a short time frame. This panel presented several approaches through which NGOs have worked in collaboration with Ministries of Health to strengthen national public sector health programs.

By the end of this session, participants were able to:
• Explain the importance of MOH-NGO partnerships in sustaining and scaling up effective health activities or projects.
• Describe at least three important challenges of MOH-NGO partnerships.
• Suggest at least two approaches to strengthening MOH-NGO partnerships.

The Case of USAID funded Maternal and Child Survival Project in Rural Ghana_ALI

Health Alliance International: Real Collaboration for Research_ROBINSON

WORKING GROUP TIME

Child Health Working Group

Facilitated by CORE Group Staff, this Working Group session identified critical child health technical or programmatic challenges, solicited targeted feedback from colleagues working in similar situations, and identified opportunities to work across organizations to solve common challenges time-bound task forces.

Community Centered – Health Systems Strengthening Working Group
Co-Chairs: Megan Christensen, Concern Worldwide; Alfonso Rosales, World Vision

The Community-centered Health System Strengthening (CCHSS) Working Group welcomed those who were interested in the topic or guest speakers, anyone looking to join a new Working Group, and individuals who were passionate and have had experience with health systems strengthening. The group hosted two guest speakers, one during each session. A guest from USAID presented the new community health framework and led a discussion. In addition, the group had a guest from USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program present a working document that is a joint effort with WHO on design and implementation principles for community-oriented health interventions. They approached the CCHSS Working Group and were seeking feedback from the perspective of practitioners. A portion of the time was also used to share the workplan and solicit input from members.

Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group
Co-Chairs: Claire Boswell, The TOPS Program, Food for the Hungry; Dora Curry, CARE

Monitoring and Evaluation’s Working Group time included looking back at the Work Plan to use it as an update and evaluation of where the Working Group is at this moment. The Working Group reviewed an informal environmental scan of materials for field-level M&E capacity building and identified directions for strengthening CORE members’ work in this area, as well as provided opportunities for any hot topics that should be added to the Work Plan.

Nutrition Working Group
Co-Chairs: Jennifer Burns, International Medical Corps; Maureen Gallagher, Action Against Hunger; Justine Kavle, USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival Program, PATH

The first Nutrition Working Group time was focused on the annual work plan for FY2016-2017, revising achievements during the last fiscal year and defining key priority areas for 2017.

Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Adolescent Health Working Group
Co-Chairs: Corinne Mazzeo, USAID’s Maternal and Child Survival, Save the Children; Cindy Uttley, Samaritan’s Purse; Mychelle Farmer, Jhpiego; Regina Benevides, E2A Project, Pathfinder International

This was the inaugural meeting of the Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Adolescent Health (RMNAH) Working Group. The former Safe Motherhood and Reproductive Health (SMRH) Working Group became the RMNAH Working Group, which will focus on a broad range of health concerns related to sexual and reproductive health, maternal and newborn health, and adolescent health. Within the RMNAH Working Group, there are two task forces: Maternal and Newborn Health (MNH), and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Adolescents (SRH+A). The first RMNAH Working Group session at the Spring Conference included a Share Fair that provided an opportunity for members to share new and innovative tools and materials related to RMNAH.

Social and Behavior Change Working Group
Co-Chairs: Lenette Golding, Alive & Thrive, FHI 360; Debora Freitas, Chemonics International; Joseph Petraglia, Pathfinder International

The SBC Working Group reviewed technical accomplishments from FY16, discussed current priorities and strategic directions for working group members, and reviewed a draft of its FY17 workplan.

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