FRONTIERS PROJECT
Development of Quality Assurance in Reproductive Health Services in District Public Health Systems

FRONTIERS worked in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the state governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra to introduce a quality assurance program for district-level management. This project has developed indicators of quality that incorporate provider, client, and community perspectives; and tools for assessing the environment at health facilities and measuring the inputs, processes, and outputs of reproductive health services. The project also provided technical assistance to develop and train a district quality assurance group (QAG) for rapid appraisals of service quality; built the capacity of district management to analyze data and to improve the quality of reproductive health services provided; and conducted a cost analysis of institutionalizing QAG.

Results of the project show that the quality assurance model is easily integrated into district-level programs and significantly improves the quality of services provided. A manual has been developed under the project as an operational guide for the implementation of a quality assurance intervention at the district level. The manual is a tool to enable district-level managers to systematically monitor the quality of reproductive health services.

The Department of Health and Family Welfare of the State of Gujarat has decided to scale up the quality assurance program throughout the state with technical assistance from FRONTIERS (see Scaling Up Utilization of the Quality Assurance (QA) Checklist in India). The State of Gujarat has adopted this manual to standardize the QA process during the scale-up.

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Location

Gujarat and Maharashtra, India

Duration

March 2004–December 2006

Population Council researchers

M.E. Khan, Leila Caleb Varkey

Non-Council collaborator

United Nations Population Fund

Donor

US Agency for International Development

Publications/Resources
Council researchers' names appear in boldface type. 

2006
Varkey, Leila Caleb, M.E. Khan, Dinesh Agarwal, and Vivek Sharma. District Quality Assurance Program for Reproductive Health Services: An Operational Manual. New Delhi: Population Council and UNFPA.* (more) (PDF)

"Scaling up of quality assurance measures in district level management in Gujarat State," Asia and Near East Region Operations Research Summary no. 15. New Delhi: Population Council. (PDF)

* Hard copies of the manual are available free of charge upon request from frontiers-india@popcouncil.org

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See Also

• India
• General Quality of Care
• Reproductive Health
• FRONTIERS India
• FRONTIERS Quality of Care Improvement

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