Leadership Management and Sustainability Project (LMS)

For five years, the USAID-funded, MSH-led Leadership, Management and Sustainability project in Haiti (LMS/Haiti) worked with the Ministry of Health and Population (MSPP) and local NGOs to ensure a steady supply of family planning commodities to nearly 300 facilities throughout the country amid bone-rattling roads, surging rivers, and rocky footpaths.

Said Dr. Georges Dubuche, General Director of the MSPP, at the project’s closing ceremony April 14:

It is with real pride and great emotion that I salute LMS/Haiti.

LMS/Haiti’s greatest success, as everyone present can attest, was to guarantee the availability of family planning commodities at all times to ministry sites, with zero stock-out.

Dr. Georges Dubuche, General Director of the MSPP.Photo: MSH staff

This post originally appeared on LeaderNet.org.

Have you ever wondered what happens after a project activity ends? We are always deeply committed to local ownership and sustainability, yet, we rarely have the opportunity to do long term follow up or reflection. I recently had the extraordinary opportunity to discover for myself the long term impact of the Leadership Development Program (LDP) in Nepal.

To sum it up in one word: Wow!

After a very busy week scurrying around behind the scenes at Kenya’s First National Conference on Health Leadership, Management and Governance, the staff of the USAID-funded Leadership, Management and Sustainability project in Kenya (LMS/Kenya) gathered on Friday morning before the start of the fourth and final day. Generally, the last day of a conference is filled with summaries and closing-day formalities. But this time, Project Director Karen Caldwell informed us that we still had one essential task ahead. Our challenge was to assist the more than 250 participants to articulate, with a common voice, a clear and actionable “Way Forward” based on all of the rich and complex discussions of the many sessions, skills-building workshops, and networking meetings that had occurred during the past week. This is critical as Kenya is transitioning to a new health sector governance structure that will give responsibility for service delivery to the county-level authorities; for many conference attendees it was their first opportunity to discuss how they can shape and support this process.

Today, in Nairobi, Kenya, we’re celebrating the opening of the First National Conference on Health Leadership, Management and Governance, a joint undertaking of the Ministry of Medical Services and the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation with support from Management Sciences for Health through the USAID-funded Leadership, Management and Sustainability Project in Kenya (LMS/Kenya).

By coincidence, it also marks the second anniversary of my own arrival in Kenya to assume responsibilities as the communications specialist on the LMS/Kenya project. In these past two years, I've seen the “buzz” about leadership and management in the health sector grow into a virtual shout. This conference is the culmination of a steady and persistent push to strengthen health leadership and management capacity in Kenya which started long before I came here.