Ghana
We partner with the Government of Ghana and local organizations to help women, children, and young people access the health care they need to stay safe and healthy.
MOMENTUM partners with the national government and local partners across 10 Ghanaian regions to help women, children, and young people access safe, effective health care. We focus primarily on increasing access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) through Ghana’s private sector and building the capacity of public and private health systems to provide high-quality health and nutrition services that meet the diverse needs of mothers, newborns, children, and young people. We also work with youth-led organizations to hold these health systems accountable for their family planning needs. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also worked with the Government of Ghana to keep essential public health care safe and accessible.
Empowering Youth to Hold Health Systems Accountable for Family Planning
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership works in partnership with Youth Advocacy on Rights and Opportunities (YARO) and the Ghana Health Service in 28 health facilities in northern Ghana to create and scale systems that empower youth to hold their health systems accountable. Using the Integrated Technical and Organizational Capacity Assessment tool (a participatory organizational assessment process) and youth-centered technical assistance, the project strengthens YARO’s capacity to implement a youth-led social accountability approach. The social accountability process aims to improve the quality and responsiveness of young people’s family planning and reproductive health services. MOMENTUM will document lessons learned from its youth-led social accountability initiatives in Ghana and Kenya to contribute to growing the evidence base on this topic.
Check out our landscape analysis to learn how youth are holding their health systems accountable for family planning and reproductive health care.
Increasing Access to LARCs in the Private Sector
LARCs, like contraceptive implants and intrauterine devices (IUDs), are highly effective and safe methods for women who would like to space or limit the number of children they have. In Ghana, while public health facilities are the primary source of family planning methods, including LARCs, there are promising opportunities to increase accessibility and availability of LARC services through the private sector by addressing barriers it currently faces in providing these services.1 MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery partners with Ghana’s Total Family Health Organization to expand access to LARCs in 100 private sector health facilities across ten regions. This work includes training, coaching to provide guidance, and mentorship to share knowledge, skills, and experience to increase and expand private health workers’ capacity to provide LARCs. To ensure a consistent supply of LARCs for Ghanaian private providers, MOMENTUM will link private health facilities with the Ghana Health Service and other local social marketing partners and implement stockout reporting systems. We will also partner with women’s groups, religious groups, and local associations to help inform communities about LARCs and their availability at nearby private facilities.
Learn how MOMENTUM is increasing access to contraception around the world, including LARCs.
Improving Health Care for Women and Children
In Ghana, 87 percent of pregnant women attend four or more prenatal care visits and skilled health workers conduct 74 percent of deliveries.2 However, discrepancies in the quality of care that expecting mothers receive mean that Ghana continues to struggle to reduce child, newborn, and maternal deaths. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership helps improve the capacity of health systems in the Northern, North East, Upper East, and Upper West regions to provide high-quality reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health care, family planning, and nutrition services so that more Ghanaian women and children can stay healthy and live long lives. We use hands-on, practical approaches to build the knowledge, skills, and confidence of district health managers and their teams to analyze facility data, provide clinical mentoring, and address the root causes of poor quality health services for mothers and their children.
Improving Nutrition for Mothers And Small and Sick Newborns
More than one in 10 children born in Ghana are smaller than average.3 Improving nutrition during pregnancy and after birth can reduce the number of low birth weight infants, helping both mother and baby stay healthy and strong. MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership is partnering with the Ghana Health Service to conduct an assessment on current practices for, barriers to, and enablers of nutritional care of mothers and small and sick newborns. MOMENTUM will work with health service providers to offer customized nutrition services that are responsive to the individual needs of mothers of small and sick newborns while encouraging families and communities to use recommended nutrition practices at home. The project is also conducting a participatory assessment with health service providers and mothers to examine the implementation of the World Health Organization’s recommended fluid and food intake for women throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and through the postpartum period. The findings of both assessments will be used to engage health service providers, families, and communities in supporting mothers and providing family-centered nutrition care for small and sick newborns.
Caring for Mothers and Children during COVID-19
From May 2020 to February 2021, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership worked with the Government of Ghana to provide health workers in the Western Region with the tools they needed to successfully care for women and children during the pandemic. MOMENTUM scaled up regional communities of practice across the country to enable health workers at COVID-19 treatment centers to exchange data and knowledge with each other in order to provide quality clinical care. We also conducted trainings, facilitated peer learning sessions, and provided onsite supervisory visits to strengthen the capacity of District Health Management Teams and primary health care workers in six regions on COVID-19 topics.
Check out this list of essential supplies for curbing infections in health facilities and keeping health care safe and accessible during a pandemic. You can also read our blog about how we worked in five countries, including Ghana, to train health facilities on infection prevention and control standards.
MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: Jhpiego, Save the Children, Ubora Institute, Youth Advocacy on Rights and Opportunities (YARO), Young Leaders for Change Foundation, Kybele, Nursing and Midwifery Council, Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association
MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery: Total Family Health Organization (TFHO) Ghana, Jhpiego, Ghana Health Service Family Health Division
Interested in partnering with us or learning more about our work in Ghana? Contact us here or check out our West Africa Regional Brief.
Learn more about USAID’s programs in Ghana.
References
- Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Ghana Health Service (GHS), and ICF International. 2015. Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014. Rockville, Maryland, USA: GSS, GHS, and ICF International.
- GSS, GHS, and ICF International. Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014.
- GSS, GHS, and ICF International. Ghana Demographic and Health Survey 2014.
Last updated September 2022.