Scale-Up of Task-Shifting for Community-Based Provision of Implanon (Ethiopia)

The Integrated Family Health Program (IFHP) is a five-year USAID-funded program to promote an integrated model for strengthening maternal and child health, family planning (FP), and reproductive health services for rural and underserved populations in Ethiopia. Led by Pathfinder International and John Snow, Inc. in partnership with the Consortium of Reproductive Health Associations, IFHP has pursued scale-up of community-based provision of Implanon since 2009. Active in four regions of Ethiopia, IFHP’s Implanon scale up efforts support the government in enabling underserved rural communities to access this long-acting family planning (LAFP) method at the village level through task-shifting to Ethiopia’s health extension worker (HEW) cadre. In August 2011, the project completed the second year of its four-year timeline. This technical brief presents scale-up progress to date, and recommendations for future efforts.