USAID Family Health and Nutrition Activity (FHN)
The Family Health and Nutrition Activity is a five-year project (2021-2026), funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), that is supporting the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) through the Ministry of Health (MOH) in achieving and maintaining high-impact reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, adolescent health and nutrition (RMNCAH&N) interventions. Focusing in Muchinga, Luapula, Southern and Eastern provinces, the goal is to contribute to national targets for the reduction of maternal mortality from 252 to 100 deaths per 100,000 live births and the reduction of Under 5 child mortality from 61 to 35 deaths per 1,000 live births over the life of the project in line with the National Health Strategic Plan.
The objectives of this project are:
- Improved MOH capacity to deliver high-quality health services at subnational levels;
- Strengthened health systems at national and subnational levels to create an enabling environment for effective RMNCAH&N service delivery; and
- Increased community engagement in health service delivery.
To realize the objectives, FHN delivers demand-driven, data-directed technical assistance (TA) focused on improving health system performance and strengthening MOH’s internal technical resources (e.g., provincial clinical care specialists, National NAV User Support Unit, and national coordinators). FHN and MOH will implement the Continuum of Care program to accelerate progress, achieve the National Health Strategic Plan RMNCAH&N goals, and increase sustainability. Working primarily with district and provincial health offices, FHN focusses on improving health system performance by strengthening decentralized capacity of policymakers, health care providers, community health assistants, community-based volunteers, traditional leaders, community-based organizations, and community members. FHN also collaborates with various donors, such as CHAI and SIDA, and existing USAID implementing partners to support MOH/Government Republic of Zambia (GRZ) at all levels of implementation, and to achieve results in each technical area using varied and complementary expertise.
FHN consortium partners include; Jhpiego, Churches Health Association of Zambia, Copper Rose Zambia, Johns Hopkins University International Vaccine Access Center, the Manoff Group, and Think well.As lead partner on Youth and Gender, a cross-cutting technical area, CRZ’s provides leadership in the following:
- Development of FHN’s youth and gender strategy across all objectives in RMNCAH&N and Providing leadership towards the FHN consortium planning and MOH annual Planning Cycle (MTEF) report.
- Working closely with the FHN Objective Leads to maintaining technical soundness of the TA strategy and Identifying and documenting program successes, best practices, challenges and lessons learnt and facilitate sharing at national, provincial and district levels
- Leading the integration of gender-sensitive, and where possible, gender-transformative approaches into planning, implementation and monitoring of MOH programming help the MOH build an adolescent and youth-responsive health system.
- Representing the program and providing leadership at national and subnational level stakeholder meetings and relevant technical committees on Youth and Gender.