Scaling Up the Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative in Nkwanta District
Nkwanta District has pioneered the implementation of a national program based on the Navrongo Community Health and Family Planning Project.
Children from the village of Nkwanta in rural Ghana. Photo: Melissa May/Population Council
Ghana’s Nkwanta District, spanning 90 miles from north to south, is the poorest and most remote in the Volta Region. Access to education is limited, and a significant portion of the population is illiterate. The population has no access to pipe-borne water and instead depends primarily on drinking water from boreholes and hand-dug wells. In the context of profound isolation, impoverishment, and a doctor-to-patient ratio of 1:115,000, the district is characterized by a high prevalence of communicable and water-borne disease, high infant and child mortality, poor maternal health, and high fertility. Both family planning and childhood immunization coverage in Nkwanta have been persistently low, and approximately 25 percent of all children under five years of age suffer from severe malnutrition.
In responding to these complex challenges, Nkwanta has pioneered the implementation of a national program based on the Navrongo Community Health and Family Planning Project. As the first district in Ghana to replicate the Navrongo project, Nkwanta has been a leader in establishing a formal program of scaling up what is known as the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Initiative.
Related project: Community-based Health Planning and Services
Results of this effort are already impressive, confirming the validity of the operational model developed in Navrongo and establishing the feasibility and sustainability of implementing the initiative with existing district resources. With this evidence, the government of Ghana is now promoting CHPS as its primary strategy for realizing universal access to health care. As the health component of the National Poverty Reduction Strategy, CHPS aims to strengthen community ownership and promotion of health education and services. Launched in 1998, the program currently operates at varying levels in 106 of Ghana’s 110 districts.
With funding and technical support from the Population Council, the Ghana Health Service established the Nkwanta Health Development Centre (NHDC) in 2001 to focus research, training, and action on improving access to rural health services. The NHDC is organized into units that support the scaling-up of CHPS through public health outreach and community mobilization, research and evaluation, and dissemination and counterpart training. The NHDC works in close collaboration with District Health Administration-managed clinical services that are provided in hospital, sub-district, and community locations.
Rapid achievement of the child survival Millennium Development Goal: Evidence from the Navrongo experiment in Northern Ghana (abstract)
Binka,Fred N.; Bawah,Ayaga A.; Phillips,James F.; Hodgson,Abraham; Adjuik,Martin; MacLeod,Bruce
Tropical Medicine and International Health 12(5): 578-583
Publication date: 2007
Accelerating reproductive and child health programme impact with community-based services: The Navrongo experiment in Ghana
(abstract)
Phillips,James F.; Bawah,Ayaga A.; Binka,Fred N.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84(12): 949-953
Publication date: 2006
The impact of immunization on the association between poverty and child survival: Evidence from Kassena-Nankana District of northern Ghana (PDF)
Bawah,Ayaga A.; Phillips,James F.; Adjuik,Martin; Vaughan-Smith,Maya; MacLeod,Bruce; Binka,Fred N.
Policy Research Division Working Paper (no. 218)
Publication date: 2006
Accelerating reproductive and child health program development: The Navrongo initiative in Ghana (PDF)
Phillips,James F.; Bawah,Ayaga A.; Binka,Fred N.
Policy Research Division Working Paper (no. 208)
Publication date: 2005
Guiding the Ghana Community-based Health Planning and Services approach to scaling up with qualitative systems appraisal (abstract)
Nyonator,Frank K.; Jones,Tanya C.; Miller,Robert A.; Phillips,James F.; Awoonor-Williams,John Koku
International Quarterly of Community Health Education 23(3): 189-213
Publication date: 2005
The Ghana Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative for scaling up service delivery innovation (abstract)
Nyonator,Frank K.; Awoonor-Williams,John Koku; Phillips,James F.; Jones,Tanya C.; Miller,Robert A.
Health Policy and Planning 20(1): 25-34
Publication date: 2005
Bridging the gap between evidence-based innovation and national health-sector reform in Ghana (PDF)
Awoonor-Williams,John Koku; Feinglass,Ellie S.; Tobey,Rachel; Vaughan-Smith,Maya; Nyonator,Frank K.; Jones,Tanya C.; Phillips,James F.
Policy Research Division Working Paper (no. 191)
Publication date: 2004
Bridging the gap between evidence-based innovation and national health-sector reform in Ghana (abstract) (PDF)
Awoonor-Williams,John Koku; Feinglass,Ellie S.; Tobey,Rachel; Vaughan-Smith,Maya; Nyonator,Frank K.; Jones,Tanya C.
Studies in Family Planning 35(3): 161-177
Publication date: 2004
The Ghana Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative: Fostering evidence-based organizational change and development in a resource-constrained setting (PDF)
Nyonator,Frank K.; Awoonor-Williams,John Koku; Phillips,James F.; Jones,Tanya C.; Miller,Robert A.
Policy Research Division Working Paper (no. 180)
Publication date: 2003
Project Stats
Location: Ghana
Program(s):
Poverty, Gender, and Youth
Topic(s):
Scaling up interventions
Duration: 7/2001 - 8/2008
Non-Council collaborators:
Frank Nyonator (Ghana Health Services)
J. Koku Awoonor-Williams (Nkwanta Health Development Centre)
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