Systems for Health project
Ghana
We support maternal and child health.
When the Systems for Health project began in 2014, one in every 24 Ghanaian children was dying before reaching age 1. Meanwhile, one in every 17 children did not survive to see their fifth birthday. S4H worked to expand access and quality of health care services, including at the primary care level, where contributors to infant and child mortality can be addressed at both the community and the health facility.
What are we doing?
The Systems for Health (S4H) project sought to sustainably support improved health-service delivery by strengthening vital systems in Ghana to ensure access and quality while mobilizing communities to maximize coverage and accountability in the health system.
One of the project’s key strategies was to help improve the functionality of Ghana’s primary health care system — the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) — in the 483 zones of the project’s coverage area. The project supported planning, capacity building and comprehensive support to health facilities and communities.
To measure progress, S4H looked at zones that completed 13 steps of the CHPS process. The steps represent the actions that are needed for CHPS to be fully functional, and they include community entry, staff deployment and training, and physical infrastructure requirements, among others. At the beginning of the project, just 7% of participating CHPS zones had completed 13 steps. By the end, 49% of zones had reached this level of implementation. Over the life of the project, this enabled CHPS zones to provide additional primary care services. In the project’s fifth year, the zones provided 500,000 more services as compared to the second year of the project.
In early 2018, the Ghana Health Service added the community scorecard to the CHPS, offering a way for community members to evaluate their services and increase accountability to improve their quality. By facilitating its application in all 483 project-supported CHPS zones, S4H helped to solidify community ownership of CHPS and fill the remaining gap between supply and demand in order to sustainably increase the use of community-based services.
Project
stats and facts
- 13
- steps to creating fully functional community-based health planning and services.
- 483
- target regions supported by the project.
- 70%
- target regions achieved all 13 steps needed for fully functional health services.
Our projects in the region
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Plan International USA partnered with Chemonics International to provide technical assistance to the Government of Senegal in the improvement of reading skills for children in early primary grades.
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