“This product, developed through a collaborative learning process among primary health care leaders and implementers from around the globe, shares practical lessons and recommendations for countries that are improving the financing and delivery of primary health care,” said Amanda Folsom, a senior program director at R4D. “As countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, they are re-focusing on primary health care as the backbone of resilient health systems. This product provides a timely look at how countries in different contexts are innovating to deliver essential health services through primary care networks and highlights country demand for more cross-country learning, evidence generation, and support to improve primary health care.”

To strengthen primary health care financing and delivery and improve access to and use of care, a growing number of countries are implementing primary care networks (PCNs). Primary care networks are networks of collaborating primary care providers working together to provide quality primary care to patients in a coordinated approach.

Because PCNs are still emerging as a well-understood model for organizing primary care, R4D and its partners recognized a unique opportunity for knowledge generation and cross-country collaborative learning about how to design, implement, and scale up PCNs.

Beginning in 2020, in partnership with R4D, the JLN and PHCPI launched a COP to facilitate action-oriented peer learning with an emphasis on primary care. The learning exchanges focused on transforming the health system to prioritize primary health care, using data in COVID-19 response and recovery, and implementing and measuring the performance of primary care networks.

The COP enabled a broader community of learners to follow and learn from three country teams implementing PCNs — Colombia, Ghana, and Kenya— and share knowledge and experiences with their peers. The COP also produced a resource, Transforming Primary Health Care Delivery and Financing Through Primary Care Networks, that highlights key takeaways on how to successfully implement PCNs.

Over three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, the COP worked to support countries to transform their PHC systems to be more responsive and resilient. Participant feedback and results suggest that the COP provided an important and valued forum for cross-country experience-sharing and learning. The experience also highlighted the need for deeper and sustained systematic learning initiatives for countries to continue to improve PHC to better meet the needs of their populations. Collaborative learning that is demand-driven, responsive, and tailored to implementers’ needs can help countries accelerate their progress.

• To read the full report, click here.
• To read the Spanish version of the report, click here.

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About Results for Development
Results for Development (R4D) is a leading non-profit global development partner. We collaborate with change agents — government officials, civil society leaders and social innovators — supporting them as they navigate complex change processes to achieve large-scale, equitable outcomes in health, education and nutrition. We work with country leaders to diagnose challenges, co-create, innovate and implement solutions built on evidence and diverse stakeholder input, and engage in learning to adapt, iterate and improve. We also strengthen global, regional and country ecosystems to support country leaders with expertise, evidence, and innovations. R4D helps country leaders solve their immediate challenges today, while also strengthening systems and institutions to address tomorrow’s challenges. And we share what we learn so others around the world can achieve results for development too. www.R4D.org

Photo © Irene Angwenyi, USAID/Kenya.

The post How to design, implement and scale up primary care networks — a new resource appeared first on Results for Development.

R4D experts who are involved with USAID’s Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator are participating closely in the symposium. Their participation includes leading the 2nd day of the pre-conference and contributing to several of the symposium’s technical tracks:

• Track 1: Institutionalizing and financing at-scale, sustainable community health worker programs for PHC2.
• Track 2: Professionalizing, compensating, and protecting CHWs and other community-based and community-led workforce
• Track 7: Digital health solutions to enhance CHW and other community-based and -led workforce programs
• Track 8: Gender dimensions in community health and CHW programming

The post Community Health Worker Symposium 2023 appeared first on Results for Development.

Jite Phido is a senior program manager on the scaling innovations team at Results for Development (R4D), where she manages the equity and inclusion, and systems innovation thematic areas at R4D’s International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA) secretariat. She additionally manages IDIA’s global innovation advisors program, a network of technical experts, thought-leaders, entrepreneurs and system disruptors from low- and middle-income countries who share IDIA’s priorities and objectives, and use their expertise and experience to improve IDIA’s work.

Throughout her career, Jite has focused on participatory approaches to development that leverage community participation and inclusion. She has designed media interventions that have reached over 25 million Nigerians across the country in six languages. Her multimedia policy research on the role of community health workers in driving equitable health access for the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale project won an award from the Development Research and Projects Center in Nigeria. As a bridge fellow with the Nigeria Economic Summit Group, Jite was seconded as the technical assistant to the Women Affairs Thematic Working Group, supporting the federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development’s work mainstreaming gender equity and social inclusion in health, education, livelihoods and governance, into the federal government of Nigeria Medium Term National Development Plan (2021-2025), a historical first for a Nigerian national plan.

Prior to joining R4D, Jite was an Atlantic fellow for social and economic equity based at the London School of Economics’ International Inequalities Institute, where her focus of study was on gender equity and dominant media narratives and discourses around how marginalized people make claims and challenge power for a more just world. Before that, she was the program director at ARDA Development Communication Inc, a leading development communication non-profit based in Lagos, Nigeria, where she worked with local and international donors, partners, clients, government agents, civil society, and communities to design and produce radio programs, videos, distance learning toolkits, participatory theatre productions, print IECs, IVR solutions, and mobile applications that addressed Nigeria’s endemic inequalities through advocacy and by targeting barriers to systems change and increasing access to information, services, networks, and social inclusion.

Ms. Phido holds an M.Sc. in inequalities and social science from the London School of Economics and Political Science, an MPH in global maternal and child health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and a B.A. in biology with a minor concentration in French from Clark University.

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As a senior program associate at Results for Development (R4D), Tahmina provides technical and operational support to the Linked Immunization Action Network. This learning network brings together immunization practitioners, policymakers and partners from middle-income countries to systematically share their experiences, identify common immunization program challenges and tap into peer implementation knowledge to improve and strengthen the sustainability and equity of country immunization programs.

Before joining R4D, Tahmina worked at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids managing partnerships and grants with civil society organizations in Bangladesh and India to pass tobacco control health policies. She has also worked in South Africa, Lebanon and Bangladesh with local partners to help improve access to health services and vaccinations, especially among refugee and migrant populations. Locally, Tahmina worked in a New York middle school to help students graduate on to high school and spent two years implementing a community resource program at a New York primary care clinic to connect families to essential nutrition, education and maternal care resources. 

Tahmina holds a master’s degree in global health (MPH) from New York University and a BS in public health from American University. She is a native speaker of English and speaks fluent Bangla.

The post Tahmina Ahmed appeared first on Results for Development.

1. Engaging Stakeholders to Turn Research into Policy Amid Political Change
October 18, 11 am (GMT -5)
Virtual
Featuring:
– Ama Pokuaa Fenny, Senior Fellow
– Alexandre Delamou, Senior Consultant

2. Advancing Equity in Health Systems Strengthening: Four Key Approaches to Enhance Equity in Implementation and outcomes
October 20, 12 pm (GMT -5)
Virtual
Featuring:
– Linda Vanotoo, Ghana Country Director
– Leah Ewald, Senior Program Officer

3.  What keeps us from separating ends and means in health reform?
October 31, 8 am – 4 pm (GMT -5)
Level 3, Room LM
Featuring:
– Agnes Gatome-Munyua, Associate Director
– Cheryl Cashin, Managing Director
– Nathaniel Otoo, Senior Fellow

4. PHCPI PCN Community of Practice Showcase
November 1, 8 – 10 am (GMT -5)
Hilton Bogota Conferias and virtual (link to come)
Featuring:
– Laurel Hatt, Senior Program Director and Practice Lead, Sustainable and Equitable Health Financing
– Amanda Folsom, Senior Program Director and Practice Lead, Collaborative Learning
– Linda Babalola, Senior Program Officer
– Emma Satzger, Senior Operations Associate

5. Contribution of the Private Sector in Health Systems Resilience and Reform (Hybrid private sector satellite session)
November 1, 8:30 am – 4 pm (GMT -5)
Level 2, Room BC
Featuring:
– Sarbani Chakraborty, Senior Program Director and Practice Lead, Mixed Health Systems
– Amit Bhanot, Technical Director of the Frontier Health Markets program
– Farhan Yusuf, Chief of Party of the Frontier Health Markets program

6. Promoting intersectoral collaboration through knowledge translation: lessons from the Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems (PEERSS)
November 1, 12:30 – 4 pm (GMT -5)
Level 3, Room K
Featuring:
– Abeba Taddese, Senior Program Director and Practice Lead, Evidence to Policy

7. Rehabilitation in health systems: Responding to changing population needs
November 2, 6:30 – 8:30 AM (GMT -5)
Featuring:
– Tamara Chikhradze, Associate Director
– Adeel Ishtiaq, Associate Director

In addition, R4D is involved in the following oral and poster presentations:

• “Evidence that a global peer-to-peer learning platform was effective in supporting immunization programs’ successful and sustainable transition from Gavi assistance” (poster)
• “Co-creation: an innovative approach for improving multi-sectoral collaboration and coordination for accelerating progress toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Togo” (poster)
• “Reimagining Health Care Delivery Models for Equity in Ghana: Implementation Research on Primary Care Provider Networks” (poster)
• “Raising the visibility of NTDs in the discussion of domestic health resource allocation: Lessons from Colombia, Guatemala, and the Philippines” (poster)
• “An approach to integrating and scaling up mental health services as part of comprehensive primary health care in Liberia: Lessons and challenges in pandemic times” (oral); November 2, 2022, 11:00-12:30, Room N

Posters will be available for viewing from November 2-4 on the 3^rd level of the Agora Convention Centre.

Finally, come find us at the Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator booth, located at E7 on the 4th floor of the main conference center.

The post R4D at the 2022 Health Systems Research Symposium in Colombia appeared first on Results for Development.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Mubangizi worked for the University of Cape Town coordinating research on the long-term effects of HIV medication on adolescents born with HIV. In addition, she is the CEO and founder of her own business that distributes fast-moving consumer goods in Dar-es-Salaam. She also served as a public health intern for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees where she supported coordination and monitoring of refugee health services in rural Northwestern Tanzania.

Ms. Mubangizi has a master’s degree in public health focusing on epidemiology and biostatistics from the University of Cape Town, and a BSc in public health with a minor in maternal and child health from the University of South Florida.

The post Lilian Tuhumwire Mubangizi appeared first on Results for Development.

As an associate director at Result for Development’s (R4D) evaluation and adaptive learning (EAL) practice, Ms. Rosapep provides technical and strategic leadership to EAL’s flagship initiatives. She also leads processes to review and analyze evidence to inform priorities for action and facilitates collaboration with consortium partners, USAID representatives, government stakeholders, and local implementing partners. In addition, she supports the growth and strategy development for the practice.

In her career, Ms. Rosapep has helped government and non-government stakeholders identify ways to improve in-service training for health care workers, expand service availability and accessibility to people living with HIV, pinpoint weaknesses in TB treatment initiation protocols, help community-level drug shops relay health messaging more effectively to their customers. By using iterative and participatory evaluation approaches she helped to adapt a peer sexual-health education program and explore the implications of modifying staffing configurations for early education interventions.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Rosapep was a Senior Associate at Abt Associates where she served as the senior administrator on Abt’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and was a Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Lead on the USAID-funded Sustaining Health Outcomes through the Private Sector Plus (SHOPS Plus) and Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) projects.

Outside of work, Ms. Rosapep serves in the Washington, D.C. chapter of Back on My Feet, a nonprofit organization that combats homelessness through the power of fitness, community support, and essential employment and housing resources.

Ms. Rosapep holds an MA in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

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