2020
Impact Report

Showing up for communities
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development
Responding to school closures and COVID-19 lockdown measures, FHI 360’s Local Partner Development Project in Jamaica collaborated with the Peace Management Initiative Ltd. to deliver psychosocial support services to youth ages 13 to 18. Our project staff offered tailored, one-on-one assistance to young people on such topics as anger management, dealing with family conflict and handling the stress of losing a school support system. The project now focuses on building local partner capacity to deliver social welfare support, including access to food and sanitization products to female-headed households, domestic violence survivors, at-risk youth and youth in juvenile correctional facilities.

Photo Credit: Mark MacFarlane/FHI 360
Supporting U.S. education programs
FHI 360 addresses many facets of the U.S. education system, from college and career readiness to educating court-involved youth, all with a consistent focus on equity. In 2020, we worked to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, families and educators.
Funder
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
FHI 360’s publication, Connected & Engaged, is a user-friendly instructional leadership guide to support remote and hybrid teaching and learning in grades 6–12. The website presents high-leverage strategies and practices. Informed by research and hundreds of educators, it is organized into five categories: systems and structures, teaching and learning, family engagement, social-emotional learning and professional learning.
Results
User-friendly instructional leadership guide supports remote and hybrid learning
Funder
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Head Start
FHI 360 provides training and technical assistance to 27 Head Start grantees in 37 states that meet the needs of 23,485 children and their families in migrant and seasonal farmworker communities. Early in the pandemic, the federal government designated farmworkers as essential critical workers. It was crucial for those Head Start programs that provide comprehensive services to farmworkers’ children to stay open. Staff helped programs transition to a virtual service delivery model and developed training events to support remote learning.
Results
Training and technical assistance meet the needs of migrant communities
Boosting livelihoods through e-commerce
Funder
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Tunis
FHI 360’s Collaborative Action for Handicraft Exports (ACEA) project supports Tunisian artisans in the medicinal and aromatic plants sector to upgrade and export their products. The artisans — mostly rural women who serve as guardians of traditional medicinal knowledge within their communities — help sustain the local economy. They are often relegated to a marginal position in the value chain and lack equitable access to public lands and natural resources.
In early 2020, ACEA helped artisans prepare for Tunisia’s largest national handicraft fair. When it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team pivoted to help the artisans enter the e-commerce market. Partnering with some of Tunisia’s leading e-commerce platforms, the artisans increased sales in the domestic market and attracted international buyers. ACEA has also supported artisans to achieve international organic certification, which should lead to additional markets.

Photo Credit: Malek Abderrahmen/MLK Studio
Taking a lead on COVID-19 research
Project
COVID-19 Prevention NetworkFunder
U.S. National Institutes of Health
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases selected the Leadership and Operations Center for the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) at FHI 360 to manage a portion of the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN) agenda as a part of the U.S. Government’s initiative to address the COVID-19 pandemic. The CoVPN Operations Center oversees the clinical trial evaluation of monoclonal antibodies for COVID-19 prevention and also collaborates on vaccine studies.
The CoVPN Operations Center partnered with Eli Lilly and the U.S. National Institutes of Health on a study of a monoclonal antibody to prevent COVID-19 infection in senior nursing facilities. We also worked with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and the U.S. National Institutes of Health on a study of a two-monoclonal antibody cocktail for prevention in households with a positive index case. These studies provide the scientific evidence needed to support an application for an Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for these products to be used for prophylaxis.
Results
Collaborating on vaccine studies
Uncovering attitudes toward a COVID-19 vaccine
Project
Audience Research: Communications Services and Support for NCIRD Recurring and Urgent and Emerging Issues
Funder
U.S. National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wanted to better understand public perceptions, beliefs and attitudes toward prospective COVID-19 vaccines, FHI 360 conducted a remote focus group study. With participants who were low- and middle-income older adults (ages 60+), parents with children younger than age 18, young adults (ages 20 to 30) without children, practice- and hospital-based registered nurses and nonmedical essential workers, the study helped the CDC identify concerns and understand potential reactions to public discussions on initial vaccination scenarios. The CDC used the findings to inform COVID-19 vaccine communication planning.

Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Protecting global education gains
In 2020, FHI 360 worked to mitigate COVID-19-related disruptions to students, educators and education systems around the world, including school closures, lack of technology infrastructure for remote learning and the need for increased sanitation measures.
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development
The Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education partnered with the U.S. Government to launch a national radio program of reading lessons for students learning from home. The USAID Partnership for Education: Learning project, implemented by FHI 360, provides lessons in English and in Ghana’s 11 official instructional languages to kindergarten through fourth grade students.
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development
The Djibouti Early Grade Reading Activity assisted the Ministry of Education with support and capacity building for telework by staff working on time-sensitive curriculum design. Also, so that students could start the next year’s reading program on level, the project helped to produce and distribute a workbook that condensed lessons missed due to school closures the previous year.
Project
USAID Passerelles SenegalFunder
U.S. Agency for International Development
The USAID Passerelles Senegal project provided hygiene kits to support schools in reopening. The project’s informational campaign about COVID-19 prompted some communities to build tippy tap water dispensers — which are controlled by foot levers to reduce contamination during handwashing — outside of schools and other communal areas.

Photo Credit: FHI 360
Connecting through technology
FHI 360 harnesses technology to increase access to information, improve practices and facilitate interaction among many stakeholders. Technology became even more essential in 2020.
Project
HIV Services and System Strengthening
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
The HIV Services and Systems Strengthening project created a free, confidential HIV and COVID-19 hotline that offers information, counseling and connection to medical care for people living with or at risk of HIV in the Dominican Republic. In addition to Spanish for Dominicans, the hotline staff provide services in Creole for Haitian people and people of Haitian descent. Peer navigators, psychologists and clinicians who are from the migrant community are part of the team operating the hotline.
Results
Free, confidential HIV and COVID-19 hotline
Project
Interactive Evidence Mapping
Funder
U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Konung International, a subsidiary of FHI 360, built a tool that provides a user-friendly, customizable visual interface for evidence mapping in the Middle East and North Africa region. The app enables organizations to look at a country’s interventions, such as education or peacebuilding, and outcomes, such as community participation or capacity, to see the volume of studies on that intersection and use the evidence base to inform future research and programming. The tool can track change over time and show the impact of short- and long-term interventions.
Results
Using the evidence base to inform future research and programming
Accelerating COVID-19 testing capacity
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development
The Infectious Diseases Detection and Surveillance project — for which FHI 360 leads diagnostic strengthening in a consortium led by ICF — designed and implemented a COVID-19 specimen referral and transport system in Mindanao, the Philippines, an area that was a hot spot of local transmission but had limited collection and testing capacity.
Between April and November 2020, project staff trained nearly 600 health care workers to collect specimens — increasing the number of facilities capable of collecting specimens from 29 to 133 — and arranged for transportation to the testing laboratory. As a result, the number of specimens collected and sent for testing increased from 15 to 179 specimens per day. The arrival time from health care facility to laboratory was drastically reduced, ensuring that specimens were tested quickly and results were returned for patient care and pandemic control. The program and model were transitioned to the government and scaled up elsewhere in the Philippines.

Photo Credit: Lucille Gantala/FHI 360
Continuing critical humanitarian aid
Project
Scaling Up Integrated Humanitarian Assistance to Yemen (SUIHAY)
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance
When the COVID-19 pandemic prevented many international aid organizations from working to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, FHI 360 found ways to continue on the ground. Project staff refurbished two health clinics that had been closed for a decade. The Al-Gharaffi and the Al-Ghadeed clinics received much-needed repairs to the water supply, power and sanitation systems. FHI 360 also supplied laboratory and medical equipment and medications, as well as training in community case management and infection prevention for Ministry of Health staff and community health volunteers. Residents near these two clinics, which includes nearly 60,000 internally displaced people, are now able to seek primary health care without traveling long and dangerous distances.
Meeting the needs of women and families
FHI 360 works to meet the needs of women and families by supporting access to maternal and child nutrition and family planning services, which remain essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Project
1,000 Days1,000 Days mobilizes families to advocate for nutrition issues, brings evidence to policymakers and leads international committees to invest in nutrition programs. Acquired by FHI Solutions, a subsidiary of FHI 360, 1,000 Days supported the launch of the Nutrition for Growth Year of Action — an effort to address the malnutrition crisis further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic — through stakeholder engagement and social media content.
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development
The Research for Scalable Solutions project conducts implementation science research to improve family planning programs in Africa and Asia. In 2020, FHI 360’s staff co-founded a global task team focused on adapting family planning programs to pandemic-related challenges and is currently partnering with Viamo in Malawi, Nepal, Niger and Uganda on a longitudinal assessment of women’s experiences with unintended pregnancies and family planning during the pandemic. The project also developed a widely shared survey to document the pandemic’s effect on family planning access and use.

Photo Credit: Jessica Scranton/FHI 360
Transforming programs to preserve epidemic control
Funder
U.S. Agency for International Development,
U.S. President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
The Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) project — an FHI 360-led project that implements HIV programs in 35 countries — was the catalyst and platform for several COVID-19-related programmatic modifications, which were then adopted by FHI 360’s other HIV programs, providing quick pandemic response. Staff developed a toolkit that helped programs continue to meet their targets safely and expanded differentiated service delivery models to bring HIV treatment, pre-exposure prophylaxis and testing out of health facilities and into communities. An expansion of Going Online activities allowed the team to shift to online interventions, supporting program participants through virtual case management. The team’s multicountry Online Reservation and Case Management app enabled 10 new countries to transition HIV services online as lockdowns began.