Over the last decade, key global stakeholders working with country level partners and Ministries of Health in high mortality burden countries have been successful in changing policy to allow lay community health workers to deliver life-saving treatments to remote and inaccessible communities; however, few countries are implementing the strategy at scale and those that have scaled up iCCM struggle to maintain an acceptable level of service integration and quality. The Institutionalizing iCCM subgroup aims to support effective programs that are ministry-led, adequately resourced and managed, and with long-term commitments of support from partners. The subgroup will provide a forum for donors, technical agencies, and implementing partners to coordinate their country level support to Ministries of Health for scaling-up iCCM.
Goal
The national child health strategic plans (or equivalent) of all high mortality burden countries include iCCM as an integral element of the primary health care system, along with budgeted operational plans for iCCM.
Objectives
- Work with the Child Health Task Force M&E subgroup to identify determinants and indicators for assessing institutionalization of iCCM.
- Synthesize operational challenges to scale-up/delivery of quality iCCM to inform design and implementation.
- Facilitate sharing of best practices from countries to address identified implementation challenges.
- Based on experience gained over the last several years, facilitate development/updating of iCCM implementation guidelines.
- Work with the Implementation Science subgroup to identify research knowledge gaps (including those identified in the iCCM CHNRI exercise), and propose research questions to provide evidence for informing and influencing iCCM programming at scale.
- Work with the Expansion of the Child Health Package subgroup for developing standard criteria for a structured expansion of a community package.
Leadership
Chairs:
- Anne Linn, USAID
- Humphreys Nsona, Malawi MOH
- Megan Christensen, UNICEF