Partnership for Advancing Community-based Services (PACS)

The USAID Partnership for Advancing Community Based Services( PACS) Activity is designed to provide technical and operational support to the Government of Liberia’s Ministries of Health (MOH), Public Works (MPW), and Gender, Child and Social Protection, as well as civil society organizations (CSOs), to deliver high quality community health and social welfare services. The specific objectives of the activity are to:

Build local capacity to implement and manage programs;
Increase availability of sustainable and quality community based health services;
Promote demand for and provision of community health and social (child) welfare services; and
Improve safe water supply and sanitation at the community level.

Activity Description

This project is designed to:

Support the MOH’s social mobilization efforts to build trust, and promote the utilization of essential services at health facilities and communities;
Support MOH’s Community Health Services Division to restore resilient community health services;
Build the capacity of indigenous CSOs to design, implement and manage quality community-based program;
Work with the GOL to finalize and implement the revised community health policy that institutionalizes a community health worker program;
Provide Technical Assistance at the county level to strengthen the community supply chain and information systems; and
Integrate universal precautions/infection prevention and control in community health service delivery.

Expected Outcomes

The project expects to:

Broaden the capacity of Ministry of Health (MOH), Community Health Teams (CHTs), NGOs, and community organizations to implement and manage community services;
Increase the availability of community-based health and social welfare service;
Improve health-seeking behavior and practice;
Improve access to safe WASH services.

Actual Outcomes

The project has:

Conducted organizational capacity assessments for key divsions in the Ministry of Health (Community Health Services, Health promotion and Environmental Health );
Contributed to the definition of the integrated community health service package to be provided by Community Health Assistants as well helping to strengthen the revision of the National Community Health Services Policy. Currently, the Community Health Services Policy is available and the integrated community health package is an annex to it;
Supported the MOH to train 1,072 general Community Health Volunteers (gCHVs) in the six counties on iCCM, immunization, and family planning. The gCHVs are providing community-based services with PACS support;
Provided technical and financial support for the development of the training curriculum for the Community Health Assistants and the Communty Health Services Supervisors;
Provided technical assistance to the MOH to develop a Community-Based Information System through the development of data collection tools, and piloting the use of the tools at the community level;
Released a call for technical applications to local CSOs in anticipation of sub-awards that will support the provision of services at the community level;
Conducted a study on service availability by, and potential benefits of, the private sector in Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH); and a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices study on care-seeking behaviors and health service use among the general population; and
Conducted mobilization among communities to become Open Defecation Free (ODF); currently 902 communities within six supported counties have been declared ODF including two distrcicts which are fully ODF.