Increased Utilization of High Impact Health Services in Mali
Abt Associates lead the five-year Increased Utilization of High Impact Health Services project in the Republic of Mali. Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), this multi-faceted project provided technical assistance, training, policy analysis, and commodity support to the Malian Ministry of Health (MOH) to strengthen health systems and improve the delivery and use of priority maternal and child health services.
The project focused on both the supply side (delivery) and demand generation for high-impact health services. It strengthened MOH systems that support high-impact services such as immunization, Vitamin A supplementation, nutrition, control of diarrheal disease, malaria, family planning and reproductive health programs, maternal and neonatal health, and behavior change communication. Abt Associates developed tools and strategies to improve the use of high-impact services and provided targeted short-term technical assistance to the MOH to support the multi-donor health sector reform process and the Health Sector Development Strategy.
The project was instrumental in assisting the MOH in:
Scaling up innovative practices such as National Nutrition Weeks which have routinely provided Vitamin A to over 2.2 million children twice a year since 2003. Most recently deworming of children was included in the NNWs on a national scale.
Updating the MOH's "Policies, Norms, and Procedures for Reproductive Health," including maternal and child health with new policies and state-of-the-art guidance. These policies and procedures were soon to be disseminated at the community health center level nationwide.
Producing a radio series to promote child and maternal health to be broadcast nationwide in fourteen episodes.
Training over 200 trainers and health providers in new policies and techniques for counseling and family planning delivery.
Evaluating key programs such as vaccination, nutrition, and family planning and applying lessons learned and recommendations from these at a national scale.
