Editorial

Abstract

Social Marketing (GSM) Pakistan is a leading development sector partner of provincial and national governments in health and population sectors. The organization believes in responding to the on-ground situations in a proactive manner. Understanding the importance of reaching out to the urban population, especially living in the urban slums of major cities, GSM has joined hands with the Federal and Provincial governments for Islamabad, and Sindh and Punjab through The Challenge Initiative (TCI) platform funded by the Bayer and the Gates Foundations.

TCI began implementation of its high-impact interventions (HIIs) in 15 densely populated urban districts of Pakistan, in collaboration with the provincial departments of Population Welfare and Health. TCI is a global platform which is currently being implemented in 13 countries in Africa and Asia and is managed centrally by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In Pakistan, Greenstar Social Marketing has been leading the implementation of HIIs since June 2022. The high-impact interventions selected for Pakistan focus on improving service delivery, demand generation, and advocacy for modern family planning (FP). Under service delivery, there are eight HIIs: 1) Integrated In-reaches, which are dedicated facility-based days for providing family planning services, 2) Integrated Out-reaches, which refers to contraceptive services provided through outreach vans and satellite camps, 3) Family Planning Integration, which refers to the integration of modern family planning services into other health areas such as vaccination or disease prevention, 4) Post-partum Family Planning and 5) Post-Abortion Family Planning refers to the provision of modern contraception to women after their delivery or abortion, 6) On-the-Job Training, refers to the on-the-job training provided to field staff by senior medical staff on provision of contraceptive counselling and services, 7) Whole Site Orientation refers to facility-based sessions where each staff member including facility’s janitorial staff and guards, is oriented on modern family planning methods to facilitate clients better, and 8) Facility Makeover refers to infrastructural renovation of facilities financially supported by TCI. Under demand-generation, the main HII is Community Health Workers which refers to either the training of existing of health workers of government departments on social mobilization for modern contraceptive methods or recruitment of community health volunteers (CHVs) for the same purpose.