Objectives
- Increase access to and utilization of high-quality health care services for children under the age of 5
- Improve the capacity of front-line providers and leaders in the Catholic Health Service and Ghana Heath Service facilities to deliver care that is safe, reliable, and of high quality
- Engage current stakeholders of existing under-5 programs and support national health interventions under the leadership of the Ghanaian Ministry of Health and its partners
- Improve performance and efficiency in key systems that support the U5 health programs (e.g., financing, human resources, information, clinical guidelines, and health sector partnerships) with a focus on the unique role of faith-based systems within the broader heath systems in Ghana
- Spread effective models of large-scale improvement to faith-based and public systems
Program Focus
Morbidity and mortality rates for children under 5 remain very high and have not improved in Ghana over the past 10 to 15 years, despite a number of national and regional interventions to improve child health. Of the 80,000 annual deaths in the under-5 age group, about 60 percent are thought to be preventable through more effective prevention and management of malaria, diarrheal diseases and pneumonia. Timely access to effective care, particularly for communities that are some distance from heath care sites, remains a major challenge to improving under-5 mortality, as does access to care for those who cannot afford it. The Ghanaian Ministry of Health has declared clear, aggressive objectives for improving health outcomes and improving the strength of the health care delivery system, which interfaces completely with the significant faith-based and private components of the health care system. In particular, the NCHS provides care to approximately 30 percent of the nation’s population.
Fives Alive! Program Director, Dr. Nana Twum-Danso, and IHI's South Africa Country Director, Dr. Pierre Barker, meet with a Busunu women's group to learn more about care-seeking behavior
Program Approach
Together, IHI and the NCHS will pursue a sequential approach to improving systems of care throughout the NCHS and the public health care system. In each wave of work, they will apply systems improvement methods to significantly improve health outcomes for children under 5 while improving the delivery of care (quality, continuity, reliability, safety) and the capacity of the system actors (leaders and front-line providers) across the nation.
The project will start with identification of promising, evidence-based best practices, and limited prototyping in a district from each of the three regions of the north. Each initial project will include a “wedge” of the health care sites within a District (interdependent tertiary, secondary, and primary care facilities along with the community). This crucial phase of work will determine how best to apply key strategies and tactics for improving under-5 health across Ghana.
Partnership
NCHS is in an ideal position to test and disseminate life-saving interventions across its system while using its close links with GHS to spread best practices throughout the rest of the Ghanaian health service. IHI will guide this endeavor through application of well-tested methods and approaches to rapidly improve health care systems at scale. The partnership will be further strengthened by an evaluation team from the School of Public Health at the University of Legon, which will assess the program’s progress and impact on an ongoing basis.
