Ethiopia

  • Blog post
    March 04, 2013

    How the Family Planning Sustainability Checklist Helped Identify FP Challenges in Ethiopia

    Last fall, Sharon Arscott-Mills of ICF International wrote a guest blog post announcing the new Family Planning Sustainability Checklist, a tool that helps project designers, implementers, and evaluators ensure long-term sustainability for their community-based family planning programs. Now Adrienne Allison describes World Vision’s recent use of this tool in the field.

    Preparing to report out

    Preparing to report out

    © World Vision 2013

    World Vision (WV) used the excellent Family Planning Sustainability Checklist during a family planning workshop for WV staff and Ministry of Health (MOH) representatives in Hawassa, Ethiopia, in February 2013. We spent the first day of the workshop exploring beliefs, attitudes, and experiences with family planning; reviewing Ethiopia’s family planning policies and guidelines; and examining the data on healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies (HTSP). The discussion of HTSP proved to be the catalyst to winning the hearts and minds of the participants, who had heard about family planning for years but had never understood how using family planning to time and space births improves maternal and child health. The second day we assessed our expectations of the circumstances we would find on a visit to Abaya, a village 100 km south of Hawassa, by rating each statement in the Checklist as “true,” “mostly true,” or “not true.” The checklist guided us to ask questions we had not considered before.   

    Sustainable Development
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  • Blog post
    February 05, 2013

    Family Planning to Prevent Pregnancy After Childbirth

    This blog was originally posted on Impatient Optimists on January 8, 2013. Authors Holly Blanchard, Senior Reproductive Health Family Planning Advisor, and Elizabeth Sasser, Senior Program Coordinator, work with Jhpiego in the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP). For both mothers and infants, there are many benefits to preventing another pregnancy for at least two years after a previous birth. In this blog, they talk about the opportunity to introduce modern family planning methods immediately after delivery, such as the postpartum intrauterine contraceptive device (PPIUCD). 

    This year, 222 million women worldwide will have an unmet need for modern contraception. And as more women are encouraged to deliver in facilities, there is greater opportunity for immediate postpartum  intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD) services. 

    Abdela Abdosh, a midwife working in Ethiopia, can offer a testament of what this service can mean in a woman’s life. He tells the story of 30-year old Shumba Berisso, a mother who arrived at an MCHIP-supported facility in Ethiopia in labor with her eighth baby. After the delivery, she turned her head away from her newborn and sobbed silently, saying she had no means to care for the baby.

    “If only I could have prevented this pregnancy,” Shumba lamented, adding that her other seven children had never set foot in a classroom, instead spending their days toiling on neighboring farms.

    Family Planning
    Program Learning
    Postpartum Family Planning
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  • Publications & Resources
    July 13, 2012

    Key Findings from the Ethiopia Needs Assessment and Network Mapping Study

    This is a summary report; click here for the full report.

    K4Health conducted a health information needs assessment and Network Mapping (Net-Map) study in Ethiopia. The study sought to:

    Net-Map
  • Blog post
    June 29, 2012

    Infographic: Contraceptive Prevalence Up, Maternal Deaths Down

    Presenting data in a visually engaging way can help audiences understand it better.[1] This new animated infographic from Marie Stopes International is a great example. It shows the relationship between Contraceptive Prevalence Rate (CPR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in ten countries over a 35-year period.

    Marie Stopes International
    Data Visualization
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  • Ethiopia

    K4Health's work in Ethiopia has focused around a qualitative assessment of health information needs. The needs assessment process:

  • Blog post
    June 04, 2012

    FP/RH Network Mapping and Needs Assessment in Ethiopia: Final Study Report Now Available

    The final report for the Ethiopia FP/RH information needs assessment and Network Mapping (Net-Map) study is now available. A dissemination meeting was also held in May in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during which nearly 50 decision makers, program managers, and others who work on FP/RH and related health topics in Ethiopia gathered to discuss results of the study. 

    Ethiopia Family Planning/Reproductive Health Information Needs Assessment and Network Mapping: Final Report

    Ethiopia Family Planning/Reproductive Health Information Needs Assessment and Network Mapping: Final Report

     
    Attendees included representatives from more than 25 different organizations, including the Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MOH), the World Bank, international NGOs with offices in Ethiopia (e.g., Ipas, Pathfinder, FHI 360), as well as a number of Ethiopian NGOs (e.g., Redeem the Generation). Many of these same organizations participated in the study, so this was a good opportunity to add any missing information and to ensure that our recommendations captured the realities on the ground. It was my pleasure to run this workshop along with our lead research consultant, Dr. Samson Hailegiorgis. The goals of the half-day workshop were to present our findings, seek feedback from workshop participants, and to discuss knowledge management (KM) solutions that could help improve reach, usefulness, and use of health information and strengthen capacity in Ethiopia. 
    Net-Map
    needs assessment
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  • Publications & Resources
    May 22, 2012

    Ethiopia Family Planning/Reproductive Health Information Needs Assessment and Network Mapping - Full Report

    K4Health conducted a health information needs assessment and Network Mapping (Net-Map) study in Ethiopia. The study sought to:

    1. Examine the FP/RH knowledge management and exchange system in Ethiopia at the national, regional, and district/woreda levels;
    2. Explain key determinants to accessing and using the latest FP/RH research and model practices; and
    3. Identify ways to leverage networks and resources to transfer up-to-date research on FP/RH into practice.
    Net-Map
  • Blog post
    October 22, 2010

    Mobilizing Religious Leaders to Increase Men's Involvement in Reproductive Health and Family Planning

    On October 8th 2010, I attended the 10th annual Global Health USAID Mini University at the George Washington University along with hundreds of other health professionals and global health students.

    I was particularly captivated by a session that discussed an initiative that mobilized and collaborated with Muslim scholars to increase men’s involvement in reproductive health and family planning at the community level. Men’s involvement in maternal and newborn health is critical to reduce deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth, especially in countries where women’s health care decisions, such as determining family size or timing of pregnancies, are heavily influenced by their husbands.
     
    Heather Sanders, a program officer from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, spoke about an initiative in Pakistan – a country where one woman dies every hour from pregnancy or childbirth – called Ulama which aimed to increase knowledge and motivate health care-seeking by men for pregnant women and children.

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  • Blog post
    July 12, 2010

    World Population Day: Understanding Health Needs to Plan Strategically

    As we marked World Population Day 2010: Everyone Counts on Sunday, we were reminded of the importance of evidence and data to drive good policy, program design and implementation in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

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