PRB

The Challenge

Young people’s ability to forge healthy relationships is influenced by social norms—the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies—that are enforced by peers, families, and communities. Social norms shape behaviors related to sexual debut, intimate partner and sexual violence, and early marriage, as well as access to education and the services and information young people need to protect their health. Research has shown that investing in efforts to create normative change at the community (rather than individual) level, while ensuring supportive policies and access to good quality services, can bring about significant improvements in sexual and reproductive health.

PRB partners with the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH), Georgetown University to support knowledge translation and strategic communication for the Passages Project, a USAID-funded implementation research project. Passages aims to address a broad range of social norms to achieve sustained improvements in family planning, reproductive health, and gender-based violence. PRB’s partnership expands Passages’ global leadership and dissemination efforts that focus on information synthesis, knowledge sharing, and capacity building.

Our Approach

In the first phase of the project, PRB developed a strategic communications plan to ensure the project’s legacy is well communicated to key stakeholders. Working with IRH and existing Passages consortium partners, PRB is developing a range of legacy products that are evidence-based, practical, and accessible to a targeted range of stakeholders:

• In consultation with IRH, design, develop, review, and create a suite of visually compelling and technically engaging communications products drawing from Passages’ existing and emerging work, including but not limited to written, digital, and video products.
• Design and implement in-person and digital knowledge-sharing/dissemination efforts.
• Capture information on the impact of the Passages communications strategy to convey the project’s success and inform IRH’s future work.

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The Challenge

Over the past three decades, the health status of women, newborns, and children has improved significantly. These gains, however, have not been equal across or within countries, and challenges remain. Globally, 295,000 mothers and 5.3 million children under age 5 still die each year, primarily in low- and middle-income countries and from preventable causes.

MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will catalyze improvements in maternal, newborn, and child health programs by ensuring the right information reaches the right people in the right formats to inform decisions that save lives and reduce illness and disability. As part of USAID’s MOMENTUM program, MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will support improvements in voluntary family planning and reproductive health activities, including their integration with maternal and child health programs, providing health and cost benefits to USAID priority countries.

Using a more targeted, context-specific approach, MOMENTUM will increase the ability of partner country institutions and local organizations to create demand for, deliver, scale up, and sustain quality evidence-based interventions.

The Challenge

Over the last two decades, many countries have realized remarkable increases in the use of modern contraception. More women and couples are using effective methods to choose when and how many children to have—benefiting their health, their children’s health, and their families’ economic prospects. However, this progress varies regionally and within countries, and demand for voluntary family planning is not fully satisfied in many USAID priority countries. To meet this need, development partners and national advocates are mobilizing to ensure that governments honor the policy, financial, and other commitments made through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Family Planning 2020 partnership, and other initiatives.

Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the PACE Project—Policy, Advocacy, and Communication Enhanced for Reproductive Health—ensures these commitments are met at the global, national, and decentralized levels by strengthening capacities in advocacy, policy communication, and negotiation; building bridges between sectors with integrated approaches such as population, health, and environment and efforts to amplify understanding of the benefits of age-structure change across development sectors; and analyzing, distilling, and disseminating evidence and data to engage policy and advocacy audiences to act. PACE integrates the cross-cutting themes of gender, youth, and equity throughout all activities.

Impact

PACE’s Budget Advocacy Drives Adoption of Family Planning Line Item and Increases in Samburu County’s Health Budget Allocations

For family planning advocates, no greater success exists than a dedicated and adequately funded line item in the health budget. PACE’s strategic approach to budget advocacy has paid off in Samburu County, Kenya, where concerted advocacy activities led to a first-ever budget line item for family planning, as well as an increased percentage of the county’s budget allocated to health in FY 2020/21. Over a period of months, PACE facilitated workshops to support the county health management team (CHMT), sector working groups, and departmental representatives to identify priorities for county budgeting. This continuous engagement with the CHMT has enabled them to effectively advocate to the Finance Department and County Assembly for increased funding for health and a new budget line valued at approximately $112,000 for family planning.

PACE-Trained Youth Advocates Achieve Policy Pledges in Nigeria

Nigerian youth advocates trained by PACE secured policy commitments from local leaders by creating videos focused on ending child marriage and increasing access to family planning services. BCAI, a youth-led organization launched with support from PACE, aided local youth advocates to widely disseminate the videos across popular social media platforms and in community-level policy dialogues with seven influential leaders from both the traditional and political governing structures in northern Nigeria. Following their outreach, the governor of Kano State made a public declaration to end child marriage by committing his support to the Child Protection Bill. While the legislation is still pending, sections of the bill that provide for compulsory schooling for all children as a method to reduce child marriage have been adopted into a state-level policy.

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