Using Provider Cluster Meetings as Peer Communities to Catalyze Change
As part of this capacity strengthening effort, MOMENTUM Nepal organized monthly provider cluster meetings to help private providers review and improve the quality of FP services to young people, as part of a quality improvement approach. MOMENTUM established six clusters, each comprising of approximately 17 private sector providers and owners. To ensure capacity strengthening efforts (including training and coaching) translated into actual practice, the project conducted monthly quality assessments and drafted action plans.
The monthly provider cluster meetings served as a valuable platform to discuss and generate solutions to challenges that providers encounter in delivering high quality FP services. The discussions focused on the challenges providers and owners faced in meeting quality standards related to FP services including counseling and procedure, the availability of trained providers and counseling spaces, confidentiality and privacy, treating clients with dignity and respect, availability of information and communication materials, maintaining stock of FP commodities, and infection prevention including waste management. These discussions were also designed to highlight successful strategies used by high performing providers and owners who were effectively fulfilling gaps in the quality of FP services.
Over time, as trust continued to grow, the monthly provider cluster meetings evolved into supportive peer communities that helped catalyze changes extending beyond improvement of quality services. These changes included improvement in values and attitudes toward adolescent and unmarried youth, as well as in practices initiated by other interventions such as data-driven decision making and improving business skills. Providers were encouraged to share their journeys of attitude transformation and of the positive impact of the contraceptive services they offered to adolescents and youth. Considering that pharmacies formed more than 70% of the partner sites and given that most health practitioners established pharmacies with limited business or managerial knowledge, these meetings proved beneficial for sharing insights into the most valuable business skills gained from their trainings. Participants also exchanged innovative ideas for generating demand at health facilities, leveraging their enhanced technical knowledge to raise awareness about family planning methods through social media while offering service linkages. They also discussed utilizing social networking site chat features to provide tele-counseling and services, and bundling age-appropriate services into packages for adolescents and youth. The cluster meetings also served as a valuable platform for updating providers’ technical knowledge on ASRH and FP services.
“We knew some of the fellow private facility and pharmacy owners and providers from our municipality. But honestly, we only viewed them as competitors. Since our monthly provider cluster meetings among MOMENTUM-supported sites in our municipality, we realized that we could help each other out and work together to resolve common problems and also speak as one voice with the local government to highlight our work and pressure them to look into our problems,” shared Arjun Mainali, owner and provider of Sarlahi Jeevan Healthcare, a health facility in Barahathwa, Madhesh Province of Nepal, when asked what he thought of the monthly provider cluster meetings.
Furthermore, MOMENTUM organized quarterly review meetings involving municipal authorities and private providers, establishing a platform for public-private dialogues to address challenges, align expectations, and identify priority areas for collaboration. Health coordinators from each municipality were also invited to the monthly provider cluster meetings to supplement the quarterly review meetings and so that public-private discussions were continued. Discussions on waste segregation and management were continued in the monthly meetings and health coordinators provided additional clarity on government regulations. Regular engagement and requests from private providers in the monthly cluster meetings resulted in the inclusion of five MOMENTUM-supported providers from private facilities in the government’s Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptive (implants) training program, primarily designed for government health workers.