PROGRESS worked to build the capacity of countries and partners to generate new knowledge, use evidence for strategic planning, develop and implement policies and programs, and conduct monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Capacity-building partners included ministries of health (MOHs), family planning technical working groups, local research institutes and others. PROGRESS also pursued research utilization on crosscutting topics at global technical leadership, regional and country levels. Selected activities and accomplishments under this technical area include the following:

• Working with MOHs, family planning technical working groups and other stakeholders, PROGRESS supported utilization of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) High-Impact Practices in Family Planning in seven countries. PROGRESS also worked in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Tanzania to ensure that revised and updated service delivery norms, guidelines and training curricula for family planning include evidence-based practices such as the High-Impact Practices and recommendations from the World Health Organization.
• PROGRESS helped USAID develop and test approaches to monitor the scale-up of best practices in Kenya and Rwanda — the integration of family planning into HIV comprehensive care centers in Kenya and the use of no-scalpel vasectomy with cautery and fascial interposition in Rwanda. Results of the work in Rwanda are available here [PDF, 484 KB]. PROGRESS also shared these approaches at global and regional conferences and through USAID’s Monitoring Scale-up Community of Practice and MEASURE Evaluation’s Population and Reproductive Health Guide to Monitoring Scale-up of Health Practices and Interventions.
• In Ethiopia, PROGRESS worked with the Federal Ministry of Health and the Regional Health Bureaus to establish eight fully functional M&E Centers of Excellence for family planning. These centers serve as teaching and learning facilities for the MOH’s M&E staff to build their capacity to collect, analyze and utilize health data for programmatic decision-making. Reports on PROGRESS-supported assessments in Ethiopia are available through this PROGRESS web page.
• In Uganda, PROGRESS partnered with the nongovernmental organization Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) to build their capacity in M&E and advocacy. CTPH’s M&E platform was strengthened, including updated indicators and data collection forms, a database, and improved skills in interpreting and applying M&E results. CTPH also developed an organizational PHE advocacy plan, which supported a Uganda PHE Working Group and led CTPH to be named a partner in Pathfinder International’s integrated community-managed PHE project in the Lake Victoria Basin. See the back page of this brief [PDF, 1.4 MB] for more about the project.

PROGRESS (Program Research for Strengthening Services) was a five-year project awarded to FHI 360 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in June 2008. The project sought to improve access to family planning among underserved populations by providing global technical leadership and working in selected countries.