UNICEF, Amplio Ghana, and Ghana Health Services have been working over the last 6 years to integrate Amplio's Talking Book into community health worker activities in the Upper West region of Ghana. The project aims to provide accurate, reliable, and consistent social behavior change messaging while providing support to Ghana's community health workers. Over those years, the evaluation team has used a variety of data collection approaches including knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) assessments and key informant interviews. The team has routinely analyzed usage statistics and health outcome data collected at the health care facilities. In the last 2 years, however, the team made an effort to better utilize the Talking Book's user feedback feature which allows program participants to record their thoughts, comments, and questions directly on the Talking Book. This presentation reviews the findings from more traditional monitoring and evaluation efforts and juxtaposes those with the insights gained through the user feedback recordings. Moreover, the presentation discusses what the team has learned from this new data source, how it sheds light on existing data sources, and how it is being used to amplify the perspectives of program participants.  

Complications from miscarriage and unsafe induced abortions are a major cause of mortality or morbidity for women worldwide, particularly in low and middle-income countries. USAID and its partners have been investing resources in improving the access to and quality of postabortion care (PAC) for decades, but progress has often been slow. Even with concerted efforts, few countries offer high-quality, stigma-free PAC at scale, inclusive of a full range of voluntary contraceptive options for clients who seek care. To better understand what is driving this slow progress, USAID MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership applied a holistic, behavioral lens to analyze lessons learned from global efforts to-date. Working with a team of global experts and conducting a global literature review of PAC work, the project identified a set of critical behaviors for providers, policy makers and clients to ensure successful PAC. For each behavior, independent and interrelated factors inhibiting or motivating practice of those behaviors were identified and organized into pathways to change. Ultimately, the work culminated in a comprehensive, yet actionable results framework to transform global PAC. Looking at this issue through a comprehensive lens gives new light to latent knowledge. Going forward, country programs can use this guidance to identify and resolve context-specific challenges and opportunities to promote quality PAC and postabortion family planning.

Why do some behaviour change communication (BCC) interventions fail to have an impact in some contexts but prove successful in others? Evidence is limited on the extent to which the answers lie in implementation issues versus external factors outside the implementers' control This article shares experience and learning from developing and rolling out a multidimensional quality index and accompanying set of benchmarks to measure and enhance quality of household- and community-level BCC interventions under the DFID- and EU- funded Suchana programme, aimed at improving the nutritional status of nearly a million people in North-East Bangladesh.


The objective of the exercise was to develop a single, simple measure to capture multiple dimensions of quality of BCC activities. Initially, tools were developed for three key interventions: (i) individual counselling, (ii) group meetings, and (iii) growth monitoring & promotion. For each, the Index measures intervention quality across five-domains (capacity & supervision, preparation & environment, demonstrating appropriate skills, disseminating appropriate messages, and dedicating enough time) and calculates a score reflecting the proportion of observed sessions that met the standard across all five domains.


Since launching the index in January 2019, the programme has seen approximately 60% increase in proportion of activities meeting/exceeding benchmarks. Regular programme monitoring has also revealed upwards trends in outcome indicators such as exclusive breastfeeding and minimum dietary diversity for children, suggesting improved programme quality is contributing. However, further investigation is planned to assess the index's appropriateness and effectiveness in supporting these positive changes.

Background: Malaria remains one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in Uganda with the entire country endemic to the disease and about 5% prone to an epidemic. With the scale up of interventions for malaria prevention, global warming resulting in climatic variability phenomena such as El Nino and increased population movements, increased parasite and vector resistance to insecticides, the epidemiology of malaria in the country is continuously changing the trend. Traditionally epidemics have occurred in areas of unstable transmission and or low endemicity especially with some regions posed for elimination.