How can we take the concept of locally led development beyond individual organizations and partners – and ultimately build a movement to improve maternal, newborn, and child health? How can a focus on supporting local and regional ecosystems enable engagement, cross-sharing, and accountability for sustained progress in quality service delivery?  

In this last episode of our season focused on localization, Debrah Lewis–a midwife, co-founder of the Caribbean Regional Midwives Association, and consultant with UNFPA–joins us from Trinidad and Tobago, and Dr. Vaibhao Ambhore, Chief of Party of Saksham, a USAID-funded MNCH Accelerator project under the MOMENTUM umbrella, joins us from India. 

They share concrete examples of taking local, community-informed ideas to scale. We hear about interventions that meet the intersectional needs of women and families, such as a program to address wage loss during pregnancy, and discuss the role that policy dialogue plays in creating systems-level progress for mothers and their babies. 

Perinatal mental health (PMH) conditions, like postpartum depression and perinatal anxiety, can occur during pregnancy and up to two years after giving birth. But its impact on moms, infants, families, and communities can be felt far beyond that. 

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Prabha Chandra, a professor of perinatal psychiatry in India and co-chair of the global PMH Community of Practice, and Linos Muvhu, a passionate advocate for mental health support and founder of the Society for Pre and Post Natal Services' (SPANS), a maternal, paternal and child mental health program in Zimbabwe. We discuss the challenges of addressing PMH and why a "one-size-fits-all" approach doesn't work, and hear examples of successful PMH interventions from India and Zimbabwe.

Together, we explore the innovative partnerships and approaches that are turning a growing global movement to address PMH into real, locally driven, context-specific programs that address mental health and the overall health and well-being of women and their babies in a way that is tailored to each community's needs.

Co-creation and capacity strengthening are two concepts at the heart of localization efforts. But what do they mean to local experts, community members, and advocates? How can co-creation and capacity strengthening improve access to and quality of family planning and reproductive health needs?

In this episode, Isaac Ndaya, a private sector and public health expert at the Total Family Health Organization in Ghana, a partner of MOMENTUM Private Healthcare Delivery; and Ragini Bordoloi, a MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership: India-Yash Youth Fellow and sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) youth advocate in India, speak about how locally-driven approaches can create contextual, effective solutions to meet family planning and sexual and reproductive health needs.

We hear about how approaches like peer-to-peer mentoring can strengthen capacity and create private sector partnerships to meet evolving family needs in the community. And we learn how meaningful co-creation, where local community members are not only involved but are leading program design efforts, can increase accessibility of SRHR knowledge and services.

“The Big Catch Up” is a global effort to boost vaccination among children following declines driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. The hope is to reach zero-dose and under-immunized children. How can localization ensure that routine vaccines reach the babies and kids who need it most? 

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Graça Matsinhe, a medical doctor and the National Immunization Technical Lead for the MOMENTUM Routine Immunization, Transformation and Equity project in Mozambique, and Hoséa Rakotoarimanana, an Immunization Officer with the MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership project in Madagascar, about how community engagement and locally-driven approaches can help improve health for children and families. 

We discuss how a technique called ZDROP is used for identifying and responding to zero-dose communities in Madagascar, and how routine vaccine campaigns are strengthened through grassroots community engagement, which helps build trust and counter vaccine hesitancy in Mozambique.

COVID-19 disrupted health systems around the world and threatened access to essential health services, particularly for women and children. The well-being of mothers and infants depends on their continued access to these services. With COVID-19 remaining an ongoing dynamic, what are learned strategies for maintaining essential maternal, newborn, and child health services, family planning, and reproductive health services (MNCH/FP/RH) we can apply to the future? 

Dr. Queen Dube, Chief of Health Services for the Malawi Ministry of Health, and Dr. Babatunde Olatunji, Executive Director for the Oyo State Primary Healthcare Board, share the adaptations and innovations born out of the pandemic that have the potential to be ongoing fixtures of MNCH/FP/RH programs into the future. Can the disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic have a positive effect on health moving forward? 

Patricia Bah of Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health and Sanitation and Marian Pleasant Kargbo, Sierra Leone's Family Planning 2030 Youth Focal Person, discuss what it takes to reach adolescents and youth with critical health services despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Surendra Sharma, MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership’s State Team Leader in India,  shares how he and his team worked with public and private health providers to safely deliver care across eight districts and three states in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Listen to this episode for more details about innovative approaches to improving water, sanitation, and hygiene and infection prevention and control during the COVID-19 pandemic.