Strengthening Health Systems to Increase Access to Post-Pregnancy Family Planning (Qadam-Ba-Qadam)

Overview

Qadam-Ba-Qadam is national in influence and provincial in implementation, focusing on institutionalizing postpartum and postabortion family planning into health systems, strengthening policies, building government capacity, improving data use, and ensuring integration with universal health coverage efforts in Pakistan.

This project seeks to ensure provincial health departments in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, and Balochistan offer quality postpartum and postabortion family planning services. Qadam-Ba-Qadam works with Departments of Health and Population Welfare, strengthening their capacity to institutionalize and scale up high-impact practices that ensure women can access quality postpartum and postabortion family planning services. This initiative supports the integration and scale-up of postpartum and postabortion family planning within the roll-out of universal health coverage to improve reproductive health and maternal and newborn health outcomes.

Project Goals

• Integrate and institutionalize postpartum and postabortion family planning in provincial Departments of Health by 2025.
• Strengthen health system capacity to implement gender-transformative social and behavior change strategies to generate demand for postpartum and postabortion family planning.
• Improve and better utilize postpartum and postabortion family planning data for decision-making by 2025.
• Adopt and scale up of postpartum and postabortion family planning through strengthened technical engagement with World Bank and Global Financing Facility.

Project Activities

• Integrate and institutionalize postpartum and postabortion family planning in provincial health systems. This includes strengthening the adoption and scale-up of high-impact practices, strengthening coordination and management platforms, and creating an enabling policy environment for the provision of postpartum and postabortion family planning services.
• Strengthen health system capacity to implement gender-responsive social and behavior change communication strategies to generate demand for postpartum and postabortion family planning. This work is done with both the federal Ministry of Health and provincial health partners.
• Improve use of data for decision making. This activity focuses on ensuring postpartum and postabortion family planning data are integrated into centralized national reporting systems, and that provincial health departments include relevant indicators in their data collection and management.
• Document implementation learnings to inform relevant stakeholders about adoption and scale-up of postpartum and postabortion family planning. The project assists the World Bank and Pakistan government with ensuring integration of postpartum and postabortion family planning in projects funded by the Global Financing Facility and International Development Association. Learnings are informing the government’s roll-out of universal health coverage, particularly the inclusion of postpartum and postabortion family planning.