MOMENTUM THEORY OF CHANGE

The theory of change aligns with the priorities of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), as described in Acting on the Call, the USAID Policy Framework, the Journey to Self-Reliance, and the Private Sector Engagement strategy. The MOMENTUM theory of change is a road map that describes how and why a given set of interventions are anticipated to lead to a specific change. It outlines broad, contextual factors that may influence MOMENTUM's success and clarifies underlying assumptions about processes and defines the information needed to monitor progress during a project's lifetime. The theory of change identifies actions at all levels to strengthen service delivery, address social factors influencing health, and strengthen resilience and self-reliance. These actions may occur on several levels, including policy, facility, and community levels. The action types listed incorporate cross-cutting MOMENTUM principles and key strategies. The MOMENTUM theory of change describes how improvements in coverage, equity, and quality of services (R1) will lead to reduced morbidity and mortality among women and children (Goal). Intermediate outcomes, which contribute to scaling up and sustaining access to and equitable use of information, services, and care, will also contribute to countries' progress in their Journeys to Self-Reliance. MOMENTUM's actions occur within a context of broader factors influencing actions and success, including sociocultural and economic factors, government and other stakeholder commitment, varying levels of readiness to succeed with USAID support, and both predictable and unforeseen shocks and stresses, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Each MOMENTUM award has a project-specific theory of change to achieve its particular goals that aligns with the overarching MOMENTUM theory of change. The MOMENTUM theory of change is not intended to replace or supersede the project theories of change, but rather to provide an overarching framework to reflect how the MOMENTUM suite assists countries in their Journey to Self-Reliance and progress towards decreased maternal and child morbidity and mortality and increased use of voluntary family planning. The MOMENTUM theory of change is used to inform award-specific program descriptions, consider pathways to desired outcomes, spell out assumptions to inform award-specific learning agenda questions, inform adaptive learning and management, and help to tell the MOMENTUM story.