For eight years, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) has supported HIV prevention, care, and treatment services to women, children, and families through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded initiative Project HEART in Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. Through its groundbreaking, lifesaving work in these five countries, Project HEART has enabled 1 million people to lead healthier lives. In addition to scaling up access to care and treatment services, two additional focuses of Project HEART were strengthening government health systems and the empowerment of local partners to provide quality health services. As part of this effort, in 2008, EGPAF began a process to transition Project HEART’s programmatic work to local, independent partners, including local NGOs and host country government agencies.
Through Project HEART, EGPAF has helped launch and strengthen three new independent NGOs in Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, and Tanzania:
• Fondation Ariel Glaser pour la Lutte Contre le SIDA Pediatrique – Côte d’Ivoire
• Fundação Ariel Glaser contra o SIDA Pediátrico – Mozambique
• Ariel Glaser Pediatric AIDS Healthcare Initiative – Tanzania
In the organizational development process, local staff and stakeholders identified a need for a long-term partnership between EGPAF and the new NGOs in order to promote accountability to international standards; provide access to technical resources and shared management systems; facilitate capacity building; and provide brand credibility to enhance organizational viability. To address these challenges, EGPAF and the new NGOs have developed a model for long-term affiliation, which has resulted in the emergence of a network of organizations that has a shared investment in supporting HIV programming in each country.
Given the nature of the transition process, effective organizational change management was a key factor for success. The establishment of the new NGOs meant that new communication structures, coordination mechanisms, and supervisory roles for staff would be developed. Some of the staff responsible for implementing Project HEART for EGPAF would be starting to work for the new local organizations, thus requiring that human resources systems be harmonized and staff be capacitated to take on new levels of leadership within the new organizations. The transition also meant that new finance, administrative, human resources, and program management systems needed to be established. To ease the impact of these types of changes on staff, at both the global and country levels, EGPAF established working groups at both levels to lead the transition process and established regular forums for communication across the organization.
With the transition also came risks. These risks included the potential for interruption of the continuity of programs, mismanagement of funding, and reputational risks if the process did not proceed smoothly. To address these risks, the transition process included a strong monitoring component. An accreditation structure was established for the new organizations, which facilitates ongoing organizational strengthening, allows for early detection of problems, and facilitates capacity building to address weaknesses.
As the eight-year Project HEART initiative came to a close in February 2012, EGPAF is excited that these organizations are able to move forward independently through new projects funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Through these projects, they will be able to continue to support HIV care and treatment programs, strengthen their organizational capacity, and expand their impact. In addition, EGPAF and these new local partners will continue to partner with host country governments to strengthen health systems at the national, provincial, and district levels to assume greater ownership, leadership, and management of HIV/AIDS programs. The success of these future efforts will require both EGPAF and its local partners to maintain strong partnerships with host country governments, innovative mechanisms for measuring capacity building activities, and a strong focus on strengthening operations, leadership, and management systems.
EGPAF has developed a number of important tools through the process of launching Affiliates and transitioning programs to these new organizations. We view these as important resources for other organizations also engaged in HIV/AIDS programming. EGPAF has brought these tools and resources together in the toolkit Sustainability Focused Organizational Development: Tools and Resources for Foundation Affiliates. This toolkit includes an overview of the EGPAF’s affiliation model and accreditation system, a checklist organizational start-up, and the EGPAF’s accreditation review tool. It also includes the Organizational Capacity and Viability Assessment Tool, which is a product of EGPAF’s collaboration with ICF International.
For more information on Project HEART or EGPAF, contact Stephanie Cálves at scalves@pedaids.org.
Showing posts with label Non-Communicable Diseases. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Non-Communicable Diseases. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Can Health Systems Adapt to Global Demographic Changes?
Last week I had the privilege of attending the Global Health Council’s 38th Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference focused on global demographic changes, which naturally result in a shift in the burden of disease as populations grow older. The key acronym of the week was “NCD,” or non-communicable diseases. As someone who has spent most of his professional life exploring ways to scale up proven interventions to fight infectious diseases in children (some of which are known as “NTDs,” or neglected tropical diseases), my first reaction was that the focus on NCDs would polarize the conference participants – NCDs vs. NTDs. One of my primary concerns was related to the scarce resources for global health and the concern that a focus on NCDs would divert resources – both human and financial – away from infectious diseases. In addition, I assumed that resources for NCDs would go to those who were living longer and more financially secure, which would overlook the poorest and most marginalized populations.
Recognizing the tension between the NCDs and NTDs, one of the conference co-chairs, Dr. Felicia Knaul (Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative), redefined the “NCD” acronym to represent the changing burden of disease by referring to “new challenge diseases.” Instead of focusing on the difference between communicable and non-communicable diseases, Dr. Knaul and the other co-chairs urged us to consider common obstacles and solutions that we all face. In particular, one problem that everyone encounters, regardless of the disease, is equitable access to healthcare. Those who are most marginalized have limited access to life-saving treatment and often die from preventable causes. This is true for both communicable and non-communicable diseases. For example, a child who is suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia has the same right to healthcare as a child who is suffering from acute diarrhea. Although the type of treatment may be very different, we should not evaluate a child’s right to quality healthcare based on the type illness. There is a need to strengthen health systems to provide quality, affordable, accessible healthcare that benefits all people who are suffering from all types of diseases. However, this will not happen by chance. Equity must be intentional. This is especially true when there are limited resources to address these new challenge diseases without neglecting the existing diseases that cause thousands of preventable deaths every day. We live in a world where the burden of disease is constantly changing and health systems are expected to adapt to these changes. In order to move towards a comprehensive, adaptable approach to health systems strengthening, we need to consider all health system components, processes, and relationships simultaneously and not as disaggregated parts. Although the solutions will be complex, they cannot be ignored.
How does this all apply to sustainable human development? As we consider the sustainability of health systems strengthening interventions, we must consider the fact that health systems, and the populations they serve, are not static. As populations change -- demographically, epidemiologically, and economically -- health systems must be positioned to adapt to the changing health needs of the population in a way that is equitable. This includes the health services provided at the facility-level as well as the household-level. Therefore, adaptive responses by the health facility must be matched by an equivalent response by the community so that treatment and prevention are accessible to all. This will certainly look different as countries go through demographic and epidemiological transitions at different points in time.
--Will
Recognizing the tension between the NCDs and NTDs, one of the conference co-chairs, Dr. Felicia Knaul (Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative), redefined the “NCD” acronym to represent the changing burden of disease by referring to “new challenge diseases.” Instead of focusing on the difference between communicable and non-communicable diseases, Dr. Knaul and the other co-chairs urged us to consider common obstacles and solutions that we all face. In particular, one problem that everyone encounters, regardless of the disease, is equitable access to healthcare. Those who are most marginalized have limited access to life-saving treatment and often die from preventable causes. This is true for both communicable and non-communicable diseases. For example, a child who is suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia has the same right to healthcare as a child who is suffering from acute diarrhea. Although the type of treatment may be very different, we should not evaluate a child’s right to quality healthcare based on the type illness. There is a need to strengthen health systems to provide quality, affordable, accessible healthcare that benefits all people who are suffering from all types of diseases. However, this will not happen by chance. Equity must be intentional. This is especially true when there are limited resources to address these new challenge diseases without neglecting the existing diseases that cause thousands of preventable deaths every day. We live in a world where the burden of disease is constantly changing and health systems are expected to adapt to these changes. In order to move towards a comprehensive, adaptable approach to health systems strengthening, we need to consider all health system components, processes, and relationships simultaneously and not as disaggregated parts. Although the solutions will be complex, they cannot be ignored.
How does this all apply to sustainable human development? As we consider the sustainability of health systems strengthening interventions, we must consider the fact that health systems, and the populations they serve, are not static. As populations change -- demographically, epidemiologically, and economically -- health systems must be positioned to adapt to the changing health needs of the population in a way that is equitable. This includes the health services provided at the facility-level as well as the household-level. Therefore, adaptive responses by the health facility must be matched by an equivalent response by the community so that treatment and prevention are accessible to all. This will certainly look different as countries go through demographic and epidemiological transitions at different points in time.
--Will
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