Across July and August 2023, the Knowledge SUCCESS East Africa team hosted their third Learning Circles cohort with twenty-two FP/RH practitioners from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Ghana.
Across our regional work in East Africa, the Knowledge SUCCESS project has prioritized knowledge management (KM) capacity strengthening and ongoing mentorship as a key strategy to sustaining effective use of KM approaches across individuals, organizations, and networks.
Through a long-term partnership, FP2030 and Knowledge SUCCESS have used KM techniques to summarize country commitments in shareable formats that anyone can easily understand and expand documentation expertise among FP2030 Focal Points.
In 2022, Knowledge SUCCESS collaborated with 128 Collective (formerly Preston-Werner Ventures) to conduct a rapid stock-taking exercise to document the impact of HoPE-LVB, an integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) project in Kenya and Uganda. During a recent webinar, panelists shared how HoPE-LVB activities continue in the two countries.
Though discussions around reproductive health services should be open to all, adolescent boys and girls experience often don’t get to take part in them, with their parents and guardians making most decisions about health on their behalf. Kenya’s health department is implementing various interventions focusing on young people. Through The Challenge Initiative’s (TCI) program, Mombasa County received funding to implement high-impact interventions that address some of the challenges young people experience in accessing contraception and other sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services.
On April 27, Knowledge SUCCESS hosted a webinar, “COVID-19 and Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health (AYSRH): Stories of Resilience and Lessons Learned from Program Adaptations.” Five speakers from around the world presented data and their experiences on the impact of COVID-19 on AYSRH outcomes, services, and programs.
Pharmacies play a critical role in providing access to reproductive health services in low-resource settings in Kenya. Without this private-sector resource, the country would not be able to meet the needs of its young people. Kenya’s National Family Planning Guidelines for Service Providers allow pharmacists and pharmaceutical technologists to counsel, dispense, and provide condoms, pills, and injectables. This access is critical to the health and well-being of youths and the overall achievement of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals.
In July 2021, USAID’s Research for Scalable Solutions (R4S) project, led by FHI 360, released the Drug Shop Operators' Provision of Injectable Contraception manual. The handbook shows how drug shop operators can coordinate with the public health system to safely provide an expanded method mix that includes injectables, as well as training for clients on self-injection. The handbook was developed in Uganda in partnership with the National Drug Shop Task Team but can be adapted to various contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Knowledge SUCCESS’ contibuting writer Brian Mutebi talked to Fredrick Mubiru, Family Planning Technical Advisor at FHI 360 and one of the key resource persons involved in the development of the handbook, about its significance and why people should use it.