The MOMENTUM to Save Lives

Successes, Results, and Impact Across USAID’s MOMENTUM Projects to Reduce Maternal, Newborn, and Child Deaths and Disability

Over the past four years, since USAID’s MOMENTUM suite of awards was launched at the beginning of 2020, MOMENTUM has been delivering effective interventions and programs that support local leadership, strengthen capacity, and improve the quality of care for maternal and child health. These investments are generating the momentum to save lives.

With a focus on the last year, this annual Progress Report shares stories that illustrate how MOMENTUM is transforming the landscape for maternal and child health globally. Working with both public and private sector providers, MOMENTUM is improving the quality of care for maternal, child, and adolescent health services. Through local partnerships, MOMENTUM is expanding the reach of family planning and sexual and reproductive health services and strengthening local leadership. MOMENTUM is supporting primary health care by training and supporting providers and expanding programs. And by embracing data use and innovation, MOMENTUM is supporting organizations to strengthen and grow their own capacity and better deliver health services.

Results like these impact the lives of millions. More than 730 million people live in areas where MOMENTUM, alongside governments and other partners, has improved reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health plans, policies, systems, or guidelines at the national, regional, and district levels.

Not only is MOMENTUM delivering results that improve the health and save the lives of women and children, but the local organizations at the forefront of delivering these programs are growing and evolving.

Quote from Darlton John, Health Alert Sierra Leone (HASiL), MOMENTUM partner. “MOMENTUM’s support has enabled HASiL to more effectively influence health policy and engage with decision-makers, thereby driving improvements in health care services and policies.”

Read on to learn more about how USAID investments through MOMENTUM are transforming organizations like HASiL and the landscape for maternal and child health.

MOMENTUM improves the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities with the goal of accelerating reductions in maternal, newborn, and child deaths and disability.

To achieve this goal, MOMENTUM works with USAID partner countries to tackle unique, country-specific challenges, while ensuring interventions have the best possible impact and reach.

Vision

MOMENTUM envisions a world where all mothers, children, families, and communities have equitable access to respectful, high-quality maternal, newborn, and child health services, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health care.

Mission

To progress toward this vision, MOMENTUM works alongside governments, local and international private and civil society organizations, and other stakeholders to accelerate improvements in maternal, newborn, and child health services. Building on existing evidence and experience implementing global health programs and interventions, MOMENTUM helps foster new ideas, partnerships, and approaches and strengthen the resiliency of health systems.

The MOMENTUM Suite

Across the suite, the awards collaborate with one another to integrate best practices and learning. In doing so, they share and apply what works—and what doesn’t—in their local contexts, identify barriers to success early, and pivot, when necessary, for the most effective results.

MOMENTUM Delivers Lifesaving Results Across the Life Course for Women, Newborns, Children, and Adolescents

MOMENTUM partners coordinate their work to ensure consistent principles and standards while leveraging each award’s programmatic and technical abilities to improve health and well-being so that mothers and children thrive. Since MOMENTUM launched in 2020, this collaboration has yielded results across the continuum of care for mothers and children, supporting good health and survival.

Since 2020, in MOMENTUM-supported programs and areas:

These cumulative results represent the changes, both incremental and immediate, that MOMENTUM programs are generating for maternal, newborn, and child survival. Results from 2024 span the technical spectrum for maternal and child health and include the following highlights:

MOMENTUM Partnerships Improve the Quality of Care for Women’s and Children’s Health, Building Toward Person-Centered, Responsive, Respectful, and Inclusive Health Systems

Better Quality, Better Business: Advancing High-Quality Family Planning Services for Young People in Nepal

Quote from Pradeep Ale Magar, community medicine assistant. “Working with MOMENTUM … we understand how providing respectful services to adolescents and young people can help improve quality of service and help our business grow.”
1000

MOMENTUM has enhanced the technical capacity of more than 1,000 private family planning providers in Nepal and has helped more than 800 private facilities in Nepal improve their business acumen and demand-generation skills, helping them to reach more clients with quality family planning services.

Delivering Integrated, Holistic Fistula Care in Nigeria

Quote from Social worker, National Obstetric Fistula Center, Ebonyi. “With this integration in our facility, fistula patients who experienced gender-based violence are open to us during counseling, and the integration makes it easier to identify their problems and provide them with medical and referral services.”
1/6

One out of every six fistula patients screened for gender-based violence (GBV) were referred for GBV services.

Advancing Person-Centered Care for Maternal Health in Malawi

Quote from Gertrude Magomero, nurse. “We have noted positive changes. We now attend to over 20 pregnant women daily. Pregnant clients start antenatal care immediately upon confirmation [of pregnancy], instead of [us] telling them to come on a designated day.”
23%

After integrating antenatal care (ANC) services throughout the week, the Linyaga Health Center saw ANC visits increase by 23 percent.

Through Power-Sharing and Co-Creation, MOMENTUM Fosters Local, Sustainable Programs for Family Planning, Reproductive, and Maternal and Child Health

Partnering With Local Organizations for Broad Reach and Even Broader Results in Madagascar

Quote from Voahangy Ratsiorivololona, SALFA. “[The MOMENTUM partnership] has improved SALFA’s capacity and organizational performance and has improved our visibility to carry out community-based action plans for sexual and reproductive health through public-private partnerships.”
89%

Of young parents who were referred for services through SALFA community health agents, 89 percent followed through on those referrals.

Sustaining Local Leadership for Family Planning in Ghana

Quote from Isaac Ndaya, director, TFHO. “Sustainability is the guiding principle of every activity we do.”
5900

With MOMENTUM support, TFHO developed a blended learning program that trained 200 providers who reached more than 5,900 clients with family planning services or counseling.

Expanding Voluntary Postpartum Family Planning in Niger

Quote from Attefine Ladjil, executive secretary, Initiative for Resilience, Research and Development in the Sahel (I2RD-Sahel). “As an organization, we'll be moving forward, consolidating and building on what we've already learned from and achieved with MOMENTUM support. We are now confident and ready to face the future.”
10k+

I2RD-Sahel has carried out 10,816 home visits by 52 local community health workers to provide information about family planning.

Strengthening Primary Health Care Advances MOMENTUM Priorities to Accelerate Improvements in Maternal and Child Health

Improving the Quality of Care to Create a Healthy Community in Indonesia

Quote from Masri Ndoen, Batakte Community Health System. “Now [the health workers] take the initiative to conduct routine emergency drills every two weeks and we review data and performance every morning.”
20k

MOMENTUM provides facilitative supervision, feedback, assistance, and training to improve the quality of primary health care services for 20,000 people in West Kupang.

Delivering Primary Health Care Through Midwives in Yemen

Quote from Suaad Hussein Al-Haj, midwife. “The training provided me with excellent knowledge. I was able to counsel the mothers about breastfeeding and complementary feeding.”

Midwives play a vital role in delivering primary health care in Yemen’s fragile health system.

Expanding Routine Immunization Programs With the Malaria Vaccine Helps Young Children Thrive in Kenya

Quote from Judith Odero, health worker. “With the [malaria] vaccine, we have seen reduced malaria admissions as well as less malaria-related anemia and deaths in our hospital. Our under-fives are thriving.”
60%

Nearly 60 percent of children under five in Ndhiwa subcounty contract malaria each year. The new malaria vaccine has the power to change that.

MOMENTUM Embraces Innovation and Strengthens Data Use to Address Persistent Challenges in Maternal and Child Survival

Creating Innovative Tools to Strengthen Organizational Performance

Quote from Harris Oematan, director, CIS Timor. “PERFORM is high level, it pushes us to think big.”

PERFORM is an innovative, systems-oriented tool to evaluate an organization’s capacity, identify needed performance improvement, and guide course corrections in a timely manner.

Monitoring Data to Streamline Programs and Improve Services in Tanzania

Reviewing client and financial data revealed that family planning events were costly and offered only short-term contraceptive options. Adopting a new approach reduced costs and expanded the range of available family planning services.
+53%

The number of family planning clients increased by 53%.

Improving Client Flow to Increase COVID-19 Vaccination in Ethiopia

Using daily data collection and analysis, vaccination teams restructured the patient flow in the facility reach more clients with COVID-19 vaccination services.
x2

Average daily COVID-19 vaccinations at the site more than doubled, from 351 to 841.

The stories and results shared through this 2024 Progress Report demonstrate how USAID investments through MOMENTUM are transforming the landscape for maternal and child health.

Changes like these are generating the momentum to save lives and helping create a world where all mothers, children, families, and communities have equitable access to respectful, high-quality maternal, newborn, and child health services, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health care.

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