Strategic Aim 2
Health systems and responses to HIV and AIDS are strengthened to better meet the needs of poor, vulnerable and marginalised people
Civil Society is usually best placed to support the most marginalised people and communities to voice their priorities, build their competency and develop locally owned and managed solutions, and to support sustainable linkage with increasingly decentralised government sector services.
Interact Worldwide works to advance the role of Civil Society in policy formation, governance and scrutiny of the health system, and in innovation and technical development. Interact Worldwide also supports the development of appropriate implementing partnerships in service delivery, especially for communities and groups which government is less well placed to reach. An important strategy in strengthening health systems is to build our partner’s capacity in policy analysis and advocacy. In that way they are able to gather relevant information and data, turn it into targeted messages and identify entry points in the health system to effect change.
INTERACT WORLDWIDE: Community Score Card Project Interact Worldwide has been piloting the Community Score Card approach to monitoring health services in Uganda and Malawi. The Community Score Card is a simple monitoring tool that allows service users and service providers to come together and evaluate or “score” the services that are provided, as well as identify practical recommendations to improve them. Local decision makers are also involved in taking up pledges from the recommendations issued by the community in the process. This approach has shown significant improvements in service delivery, such as provision of solar power to a clinic and CD4 count machines in Uganda and an improvement of attitude of health staff reported by service users in Malawi. The current project, funded by the World Bank, aims at scaling up the approach in Malawi and Uganda, as well as expanding it to India, Pakistan and Ethiopia, where partner organisations have been trained in conducting the exercise and participated in an exchange visit to Uganda to learn from the experience of their counterparts. |