Progress Quarterly Report: Advancing Partners & Communities

Agency for International Development, beginning October 1, 2012. APC is implemented by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., in collaboration with FHI 360. The project focuses on advancing and supporting community programs that seek to improve the overall health of communities and achieve other health-related impacts, especially in relationship to family planning. APC provides global leadership for community-based programming, executes and manages small- and medium-sized sub-awards, supports procurement reform by preparing awards for execution by USAID, and builds technical capacity of organizations to implement effective programs. The project goal is to advance and support community programs that seek to improve the overall health of communities, especially in relationship to family planning. The APC project is structured around three result areas: Result 1, which involves global technical leadership and advocacy for community-based family planning; Result 2, which focuses on grants management and technical assistance; and Result 3, which relates to capacity building activities. The project's technical areas within community-based family planning include Community Health Systems, New Product Introduction and Scale-up, Family Planning Integration, and Engaging Community-based and Faith Organizations on Family Planning. A detailed logic model serves as the basis for the Performance Monitoring Report (PMR), summarizing the pathways by which APC effects change. The logic model reflects the three results and associated activities, and indicators at the outputs, outcomes, and impact levels. In Year 6, the logic model was re-designed using color-coded boxes to help align the activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. The PMR includes indicators and results for each result area, providing context and background to accomplishments. For all indicators, targets are suggested to provide a marker of progress and a means to succinctly summarize APC results. Qualitative information is described by indicator under each result area table, detailing the achievement or innovation. APC provides global leadership and advocacy for community-based family planning through its efforts to advance community health systems, develop and disseminate resources, and increase consideration of gender and youth in FP programming. The project has achieved several indicators, including the number of global or regional FP technical meetings at/for which APC has provided leadership, the number of partners newly engaged or strengthened in their efforts to champion CBFP and related innovations, and the number of countries where APC promotes ongoing advocacy for CBA2I policy change and/or tracks advocacy. In Year 6, APC reframed the technical areas within community-based family planning into four categories: Community Health Systems, New Product Introduction and Scale-up, Family Planning Integration, and Engaging Community-based and Faith Organizations on Family Planning. This framework provides a clear structure for APC's strategies and accomplishments, and aligns with the project's results and activities. The APC project has made significant progress in advancing and supporting community programs that seek to improve the overall health of communities, especially in relationship to family planning. The project's global technical leadership and advocacy efforts have resulted in increased support for and commitment to community-based family planning in priority countries. The project's grants management and technical assistance efforts have led to improved measures of performance in community-based health programs, and the project's capacity building efforts have improved the organizational capacity of PVOs/NGOs to implement and manage quality community health programs.