End Preventable Deaths of Women and Kids in Togo

Integrate Health in Partnership with Gavi in Guinea

Integrate Health has teamed up with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to improve health services in Guinea, particularly for zero-dose children: children in remote areas who have not received a single shot of a routine vaccine. In June, Dr. Kocra Assoua, Senior Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Quality Improvement at Integrate Health, unveiled the collaboration at the Global Vaccine Impact Conference in Madrid.

Expansion Highlights

Successes

Expansion in Guinea: Integrate Health and the Guinea MOH have continued to co-design the implementation strategy for program activities in Kouroussa, Integrate Health’s model district in Guinea. The Integrate Health team and the Kouroussa district health team have selected implementation sites, validated a supply chain strategy, and defined a mechanism for user fee elimination. In June, community meetings to explain, and ensure community buy-in for, the IPCP were facilitated in each of five target sites of Banfêlè, Douako, Kiniéro, Babila and Kanseriyah, reaching over 200 community members. For these meetings, Integrate Health was accompanied by the Kouroussa District health and Kankan Regional health teams. Next steps in the elaboration of the IPCP implementation strategy include the approval of the monitoring and evaluation strategy and training of health center staff. The official launch of the IPCP is planned for July 2023 with patient care to begin in October 2023. 

Challenges

Expansion and National CHW reform in Togo: One of Integrate Health’s goals for FY23 was to expand government-led implementation of the IPCP to five new health centers, with 40 supported CHWs serving approximately 50,000 people in a new region of Togo.  During this quarter, IH modified this milestone to better align to the developing national community health reform process. Rather than having IH expand to a new region directly, the government asked IH to support implementation of the reform in a new region. Working together, IH and the MOH selected one of the districts with the lowest health outcomes in all of Togo, the Anié district in the Plateaux region, as a pilot site for the national CHW reform. IH, leveraging implementation experience in the Kara region, will align expansion efforts to support the MOH to pilot the CHW reform, which is expected to launch in FY24 with 150 CHWs to serve 113,000 people. While IH’s expansion goals have been delayed and modified, the new population target is more than double the previous expansion target set for FY23. In Anié district, IH will work with the MOH to design and implement an M&E framework for the pilot, support data analysis of a baseline evaluation, and support the MOH in mobilizing sufficient resources to implement the pilot program. This is a great opportunity to move the needle on institutionalizing professional CHWs in Togo.  

Organizational Highlights

Successes

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives: Integrate Health is committed to dismantling power structures that perpetuate racism, gender discrimination, neo-colonialism, classism, and other forms of inequality. At the beginning of FY23, Integrate Health worked with a DEI consultant who conducted a series of workshops with staff members. As a result of this work, this past quarter, Integrate Health updated our culture code and released an updated statement on anti-racism. In addition, recognizing the existing inequities in the field of international development, Integrate Health developed a Resource Mobilization Code of Ethics. This document guides our Development and Communications team to ensure that they continue to uphold the organization’s commitment to equity and transparency in fundraising. As Integrate Health continues to grow, we will ensure continued learning amongst our staff and will provide the resources to enable our staff and partners to uphold our organizational values. We invite everyone to read more about these initiatives and about Integrate Health’s values on the DEI page of our website.

Challenges

Departure of COO: IH’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Patrick Aylward resigned amicably in April 2023 to join the global strategy team at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Patrick was involved with IH since 2005, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer, then as a board member, and most recently as COO since 2019. Patrick's departure presented an opportunity for IH to think critically about our leadership model as we move towards shifting more decision-making power to West Africa, closer to our operating regions. To that end, the role of COO will be replaced with that of a Global Managing Director. IH is exploring the possibility of establishing a Global Support Team hub in West Africa, beginning with the strategic hire of the Global Managing Director. This process will begin in August 2023.  

CHW Spotlight:Tayagne Moissegma, Danpken District

Tayagne Moissegma works in Wadjado, a village located 12 km from the rural municipality of Naware in the Dankpen district. She has worked with Integrate Health since 2019. Tayagne's days often start at 6am, and she visits an average of ten households per day, spending between 30 and 60 minutes at each location. Once a week, she holds awareness-raising sessions and educative talks—the most recent one being a reminder on the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net during the rainy season.During her household visits, she reminds pregnant women of their upcoming prenatal consultation appointments at the health center and checks to see if any children are sick or overdue for vaccinations.

Tayagne recalls a household visit from last year when she encountered a two-year-old boy suffering from diarrhea with other symptoms including fever, vomiting, and fatigue. Tayagne noticed that the boy was underweight. After taking his measurements, she suspected he was severely malnourished, something that his mother had not realized. Tayagne referred the child to the Naware health center, where he was diagnosed with a complicated case of severe acute malnutrition. After being treated by the nurse and spending a few days at the hospital, he returned home to continue treatment with therapeutic food supplements under the regular supervision of Tayagne. The boy’s mother was grateful and credits Tayagne for saving the life of her child.

Financial Highlights

• This quarter, Integrate Health received generous renewal funding from eight partners and brought on four new partners. We remain grateful for your continued support and are excited to be able to continue providing lifesaving primary care to communities in need in Togo and Guinea.
• With Integrate Health’s expansion into Guinea, our finance team updated our cashflow projection systems to adapt to the reality of working in two countries. In May, we separated our cashflow by country and grant restriction. This new disaggregated cashflow will better help our finance and operations teams to monitor country-specific flows and will help our program and development teams plan accordingly.

Links:

• Integrate Health website