Experience in this Country
- Management and Leadership Program 2000–2005
- Basic Support for Institutionalizing Child Survival (BASICS) 1999–2009
- Local Initiatives Program 1999–2002
Management and Leadership Program
2000–2005The M&L Program was designed to improve the performance of leaders, managers, and organizational management systems, and improve organizations' ability to anticipate and respond effectively to the changing external environment. Working with public, private, and nongovernmental organizations at all levels of the health sector, M&L strengthened individual employee, organization, and national program performance. These improvements contributed significantly to the delivery of high-quality health services.
Basic Support for Institutionalizing Child Survival (BASICS)
1999–2009As a technical assistance partner for newborn and child health to the USAID Bureau for Global Health, the Basic Support for Institutionalizing Child Survival (BASICS) Project develops and implements strategies to reduce preventable infant and childhood deaths in the developing world. MSH works as a partner in BASICS, which began its third phase in October 2004. Under this indefinite quantity contract (IQC), BASICS assists USAID/Washington Bureaus, USAID field missions, host-country governments, donor agencies, NGOs, PVOs, research institutions, and the private sector to scale up and increase the use of newborn and child health and nutrition interventions by families, communities, and health systems.
Since 1993, BASICS has worked to achieve substantial improvements in coverage and to expand effective newborn and child health interventions. BASICS focus areas include newborn health, essential nutrition actions like vitamin A supplementation, immunization, integrated management of childhood illness, treatment of diarrhea and pneumonia, and malaria control. In addition to strengthening the delivery of basic newborn and child health services, BASICS has expanded its technical scope to include pediatric HIV & AIDS, birth spacing, and child survival and nutrition in complex humanitarian crises. BASICS areas of expertise include assistance to countries on comprehensive strategies or selected interventions for newborn and child health, building partnerships, delivery of quality newborn and child health services, community-based treatment and private sector approaches to expand access to services, and capacity building and training.
In India, BASICS provided technical assistance to CARE International/India, which has provided humanitarian assistance and food supplementation for more than fifty years. MSH assisted CARE in planning the integration of neonatal health in their Integrated Nutrition and Health Project II, the second phase of a ten-year project designed to help vulnerable families to achieve adequate nutrition and to improve the health status of women and children across India.
Local Initiatives Program
1999–2002Over 350 million people in India live in poverty and many of those people lack access to adequate reproductive and child health (RCH) services. In 1999, MSH and Technical Assistance, Inc. (TAI) began piloting the Local Initiatives Program in India (India-LIP) to expand reproductive and child health services to low-income, under-served families.
A guiding principle of India-LIP is that the effectiveness, quality, and sustainability of any health initiative depend on the direct involvement of local community members at every level. Inspired by the sustained success of MSH's Local Initiatives Program in Bangladesh, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for MSH and TAI to adapt their unique approach to the Indian context.
MSH and TAI have designed pilot programs in three distinct geographic areas-urban slums in Calcutta, a rural region in northwest India, and a remote mountainous area at the base of the Himalayas. The common elements used to implement the program at the three sites include: community volunteers; community health committees with official policymaker involvement; implementation of an RCH package; adaptation of LIP Bangladesh training and management tools; community mapping of RCH needs; and a new focus on initiatives to reach adolescents.
With vital community support, the program has already begun to improve reproductive and child health care in its target regions. Local women, trained to deliver information and basic services to their neighbors, are achieving new status in their communities and motivating others to do the same. Private physicians are lending their expertise at nominal rates, participating in community trainings, workshops, and discussion sessions. Elected officials and religious leaders are raising money, organizing satellite health clinics, and encouraging people to get involved.
At the end of the three-year effort, MSH and India-LIP will share the lessons learned in these pilot programs with the government of India and local NGOs to expand and strengthen health services throughout the country.
