Highlighting SHOPS Plus experience elevating the quality of care among private providers

As SHOPS Plus moves through its final year, a number of dissemination events are planned to share the rich learnings across the project. First up was SHOPS Plus’ participation in Elevating Quality of Care in Family Planning Services, a webinar hosted by the International Best Practices Network on October 1, 2020. The quality of private sector service delivery has been a major focus of the project’s activities and an important area to contribute to global learning. In addition to SHOPS Plus, the agenda included speakers from World Health Organization, and PSI’s SIFPO2 project. The webinar, which attracted over 200 participants worldwide, featured two of the SHOPS Plus’ country programs, Nigeria and Senegal.

Ifeanyi Okekearu, chief of party for the SHOPS Plus project in Nigeria, described how the project went beyond traditional training programs to create a culture of quality. The program trained more than 930 public and private providers, and complemented the training with coaching and supportive supervision. This comprehensive approach to learning created a collaborative and engaging support system that addressed barriers that limited providers’ readiness, willingness, and ability to provide quality family planning services, including long-acting reversible contraceptives. The program included skills strengthening in data management for the providers and facilitated public-private partnerships for family planning commodities.

Dr. Isseu Diop Touré, chief of party for the SHOPS Plus project in Senegal, presented the successful quality improvement pilot which focused on 75 facilities and involved coaching more than 600 private providers. The Senegal team adapted for private providers a training methodology used in the public sector that addresses gaps in the practice environment such as access to commodities, weak clinical skills or lack of access to finance to make structural improvements. The coaching pilot resulted in improvements in family planning, maternal and child health, and business and management outcomes.

According to the director of Clinique Nest, one of the participating facilities, “Our midwives offered very few family planning services. Thanks to the support of SHOPS, we’ve doubled our capacity for gynecological services. We had 97 family planning clients seen by midwives that received coaching on long-term methods. As a result, 32 of 97 clients are now using a long-term method.”

Watch the video of the webinar.

Learn more about the SHOPS Plus approach to quality.