Lessons Learned from the Scale-Up Experience of Six High-Impact Interventions in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health

Publish Date: June 2014
Author: MCHIP, MCSP
Language: English

One of MCHIP’s cross-cutting themes was to support governments to bring high-impact health interventions to scale. This review draws on 18 case studies involving MCHIP support to scale up six health interventions.

The research team conducted desk reviews for each case study based on project documents and published and gray literature, supplemented by in-country teams’ self-assessments of progress in institutionalizing the intervention and interviews with technical team members at MCHIP headquarters.

The 18 cases of scaling up maternal, newborn and child health interventions demonstrate some good scale-up practices. Almost all employed a comprehensive approach, seeking to address how the new practices would be supported through a variety of components of the health system. The interventions drew on robust evidence of effectiveness, but were implemented in ways which were congruent with national health systems and structures. Despite the considerable diversity in the interventions, contexts, stakeholders, and available resources, the review identified several key lessons for designing and implementing scale-up efforts that cut across these various experiences.