Transferring Ghana\u27s system of evidence-based health program development: Program for an initial exchange with Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso

Ghana’s Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) experiment demonstrated that mobilizing community volunteerism, in combination with retraining and redeploying nurses to village-based locations reduced childhood mortality rates in that country. Thus, CHPS has become the government’s primary strategy for realizing universal access to health care. This report provides a description of an initial exchange organized by the Ghana Health Service, the Navrongo Health Research Centre, and the Population Council to explore ways of transferring and adapting these evidence-based strategies to other countries in the region. The exchange included representatives from the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation and the Burkina Faso Ministry of Health, along with donors and multilateral organizations that have been active in the areas of health care and family planning service delivery. The meeting concluded with a consensus statement launching an international working group to design programs using evidence-based, problem-solving processes for improving services, specifically in the areas of primary health care and reproductive health/family planning