Country Work

Re-imagining Technical Assistance for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health and Health Systems Strengthening

Initiative will be in Nigeria and the DRC From March 2018-September 2020, the Child Health Task Force teamed up with Sonder Collective, a human-centered design (HCD) firm, to support the ministries of health (MOH) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Nigeria to use HCD to re-imagine the current model of how technical assistance (TA) for maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) and health systems strengthening (HSS) is delivered.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI), the initiative aimed to strengthen local capabilities to implement integrated, evidence-based, MNCH and health system strengthening (HSS) interventions that will achieve the 2030 Survive, Thrive, and Transform Vision.

Visit our country pages to learn about how the process unfolded in each country:

Nigeria
DRC

Re-imagining for effective & systematic delivery of country-driven technical assistance.

Our Approach

The Task Force followed a participatory and HCD approach, designed jointly with the experts operating in and experiencing the current models of technical assistance because they have the greatest expertise and insight to change them.

We supported the DRC's and Nigeria's MOHs to identify stakeholders and form co-creation teams in each country. Using an iterative process of research and co-creation workshops, facilitated by Sonder and JSI, the stakeholders defined current issues with technical assistance, identified their root causes, and developed innovative and context specific solutions.

The core project team (the Task Force Secretariat, JSI, and Sonder) and a project advisory committee (PAC) guided the initiative's activities, including developing a Theory of Change. The PAC was comprised of Task Force members who were currently implementing MNCH programs in the DRC and/or Nigeria. See below for a list of organizations who were involved in the PAC.

What Do Countries Want from TA?

Critical Shifts

Local stakeholders in both countries identified nine critical shifts that need to happen in order to transform the current TA system. These shifts created a bridge between the uncovered challenges of current approaches and the vision that country co-creation teams would develop.

TA Critical Shifts

Chart of 9 critical shifts for better TA

Principles for Good TA

How do we make the change happen?

Building off of the critical shifts, the co-creation teams developed design principles for good technical TA, which were synthesized and organized into a framework of four domains of change.