Community health supervisor in Afghanistan reviewing mapping of his village. Photo Credit: Michael Paydos.

 

In every kind of locale, whether remote or urban, MSH’s vision for the delivery of quality, integrated health services is based on the needs of clients and providers alike. We work with our local partners to ensure that all the necessary elements are in place for providers to be able to consistently deliver vital health services to clients day after day—from household to the hospital—throughout the life cycle of care. MSH has helped our partners in many countries to meet the health needs of individuals, families, and communities in a sustainable way and at a scale that achieves wide health impact.

MSH combines extensive public health expertise, proven service delivery approaches, and evidence-based interventions in five critical areas:


SERVICES

  • Policy development We assist governments with defining and implementing health care policy, strategies, and guidelines
  • Planning We help local partners to assess and plan for meeting the health needs at the central, regional, local, and community levels, bringing stakeholders together across all sectors to develop public health programs that will deliver effective clinical interventions where they are needed. 
  • Community mobilization We expand access to high-quality basic health care using community-based approaches to engage civil society in program design, management, quality review, and accountability.
  • Integration of services We help health programs to integrate services—such as those for HIV & AIDS prevention, care, and treatment; tuberculosis; family planning; and maternal and child health. This increases efficiency, service coverage, access, and quality of care, while lowering the cost of services.
  • Systems development We work with health officials to create effective systems for managing health information, improving the capacity and productivity of the health workforce and for ensuring a reliable supply of medicines, commodities, and equipment. We implement effective models for health care financing and costing of services, including performance-based financing.
  • Monitoring and evaluation We provide tools and methods by which health professionals can monitor and evaluate the success of their health service delivery programs.
  • Capacity-building We apply proven methods to increase the knowledge and skills of health officials and professionals at all levels to strengthen the management and service components of a health system.


RESULTS
Through its Expanding Contraceptive Use project in Afghanistan, MSH worked with communities to make contraceptive use an accepted practice. Over an eight-month period, contraceptive use more than doubled in each of the three project sites. MSH also found that as many as one-half of mothers with young infants wanted no more children and one-third wanted to delay future pregnancies.  These are important and unique contributions to Afghanistan’s national program to address maternal deaths through increased contraceptive use.