Archive for: Madagascar


The USAID Population, Health and Environment (PHE) Integration Activity in Madagascar (2017-2019) was led by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. under the USAID Advancing Partners & Communities (APC) Project and USAID’s Community Capacity for Health Program. The PHE Integration Activity in Madagascar had the objective of studying, documenting, and promoting the effective integration of PHE activities with the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministry of Population, Social Protection and Promotion of Women, and other stakeholders in Madagascar. The PHE Integration Activity ended in 2019, however the USAID Community Capacity for Health Program in Madagascar continued family planning, child health and monitoring and evaluation work in the same geographic areas.

The USAID Community Capacity for Health Program—known in Madagascar as Mahefa Miaraka—was a five-year (2016–2021) community-based integrated health program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Program was a collaborative effort among the Ministry of Public Health, USAID, and JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. Mahefa Miaraka provided tools and capacity-building training to approximately 10,000 community health volunteers who provided basic maternal health, child health, and family planning services to their local communities.

Year: 2021

Source: John Snow, Inc.

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Climate change impacts fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest, most marginalized communities, particularly those highly dependent on direct use of natural resources, such as subsistence fishing communities. Vulnerability to climate change involves social and ecological factors, and efforts to reduce it and build long-term resilience must target both. In Madagascar national and international planning to address vulnerability remains vague and indeterminate for most of the island’s coastal communities, with little meaningful implementation. Therefore, local measures to build resilience and adaptive capacity are critical to ensure that communities are able to cope with the immediate and long-term effects of climate change. This article examines a PHE program in Madagascar, and illustrates how practical initiatives can contribute to building immediate and long-lasting resilience and adaptive capacity. These approaches could play a key role in adaptation measures within the western Indian Ocean region, where many coastal communities live in severe poverty on the front line of a rapidly changing climate.

Year: 2013

Source: Western Indian Ocean Journal of Marine Science

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    Madagascar has a rich history of integrated conservation and development initiatives. This report provides an overview of the evolution of the integrated PHE approach in Madagascar from the late 1980s through until the present day, along with a summary of opportunities and challenges relating to the scale up of this approach moving forward. It draws heavily on several excellent reports published during the mid-late 2000s, supplemented by grey literature and personal communications. This report is organised chronologically, with overlapping phases reflecting key developments in policy and practice. Major projects and players are highlighted at each stage, in addition to important approaches and lessons learned.

    Year: 2014

    Source: Blue Ventures | The Madagascar PHE Network

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      Much has been written on the history of and factors affecting environment sector successes and challenges in Madagascar. This case study focuses specifically on how the conservation sector has engaged in identifying and addressing unmet need for family planning (FP) in Madagascar over approximately two decades (1988 –2007), in the context of improving local livelihoods and reducing pressures on the country’s dwindling natural resource base including its unique biodiversity. It looks at how previous andongoing efforts linking or integrating population and environment (PE) efforts have been and are being scaled up past the site level. The purpose of this study is to highlight drivers of change, constraints and enabling factors to help explain the history and to identify strategies that may be replicable or newly applied elsewhere in-country or outside. This case study is designed to help answer the question: How can the conservation community further contribute to meeting unmet need for family planning in order to reduce future pressure on natural resources and biodiversity and promote more sustainable livelihoods?

      Year: 2008

      Source: World Wildlife Fund

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        The Packard Foundation’s Population-Environment (PE) Initiative, which began in June 2000, placed primary emphasis on supporting projects that integrated conservation and family planning in communities near areas of high biodiversity. It supported leadership development and increased advocacy for and awareness of population-environment linkages. The PE strategy sought to improve the quality of life in focal areas, increase collaboration and leadership on interdisciplinary topics, and used mass media and targeted campaigns to increase the public and policymakers’ awareness of the links and solutions. The review team finalized a report to the Packard Foundation in June, 2005 that covers the three objectives of the Packard Foundation Population-Initiative. This report to USAID provides a more limited assessment of the success of the Packard and USAID-funded field projects with a particular focus on six USAID-funded projects in the Philippines and Madagascar, three of which are co-funded with Packard.
        This 2005 project review concentrates on three major questions:
        1. What are the likely long-term impacts of this Initiative on funding and the field of Population-Environment?
        2. What results have been achieved by projects implemented under the Initiative? and
        3. What lessons have been learned that may be of broader use to the Foundation, other donors, and the field as a result of implementing this Initiative?

        Year: 2005

        Source: United States Agency for International Development | The David and Lucille Packard Foundation

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          Population-Health-Environment (PHE) is an interdisciplinary model of programme design which recognises the complex interconnections between people, their health and their environment. PHE responds holistically to the challenges faced by ecosystems and the communities dependent on them, with thematically distinct but interconnected work strands sharing the same infrastructure, resources and goals. This has been shown to achieve better outcomes than tackling health and environmental issues in isolation. This paper shows how PHE programme design has been used by Blue Ventures for providing family planning services in a remote, biodiverse coastal region in southwest Madagascar. The PHE programme has integrated family planning services into a pre-existing, community-based conservation programme, aided by the established infrastructure and good community relations developed by the conservation workers. Implementation of the programme has led to a strong uptake of family planning services, and couples in the region are now able to make their own family planning choices. Successes and challenges of the programme are discussed.

          Year: 2014

          Source: Reproductive Health Matters

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            This report describes the results of a 2007 evaluation of WWF (World Wildlife Fund) PHE (Population, Health and Environment) projects sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development). The PHE sites were located in Africa and Asia, where human-environment interactions are in constant flux, human populations are growing rapidly, and they depend most directly on and affect most profoundly some of the richest forest and marine ecosystems on Earth. The PHE projects facilitated basic health care and RH (reproductive health) provision with the working thesis that improving human health and environmental conservation jointly adds value to each independently. The report also recommends future actions on sustainability and scale up of PHE approaches, improved data collection and monitoring and technical support.

            Year: 2008

            Source: World Wildlife Fund

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              For over a decade community-based projects linking family planning, health, and environment efforts were active in Fianarantsoa province, Madagascar. This brief explores the evolution of cross-sectoral approaches and projects in Fianarantsoa province. The early cross-sectoral initiatives recognized that conservation and management of natural resources could be undermined by high fertility rates, and that addressing health needs would lead to a connection between communities and development practitioners. Evaluations have demonstrated that these projects have reached new audiences, were efficient, and fostered greater community involvement.

              Year: 2006

              Source: Population Reference Bureau

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                This paper builds the evidence base for how implementers have integrated Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and freshwater ecosystem conservation to date in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and documents lessons learned from projects that take a more holistic approach to conservation and development. After an extensive review of existing projects that integrate freshwater conservation and WASH appraoches, the report summarizes four projects that provide good models for future efforts in SSA. These projects are: The Rural Access to New Opportunities for Health and Water Resource Management (RANON’ALA) Project in Madagascar; Pangani Basin Environmental Flow Assessment in Tanzania; Working for Wetlands in South Africa; and the Sustainable Fisheries (Ba-Nafaa) Project in The Gambia and Senegal. The report also provides lessons learned from the review, as well as an analysis of opportunities and challenges with implementing integrated health and conservation projects.

                Year: 2012

                Source: Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group | Conservation International

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                  This study presents Blue Ventures’ experiences incorporating sexual and reproductive health services within a pre-existing community-based marine conservation initiative in Madagascar as part of an integrated population, health and environment (PHE) programme. The findings emphasize the mutually beneficial synergies, supporting both public health and conservation objectives, which can be created by integrating sexual and reproductive health services into more conventional biodiversity conservation activities. This PHE approach demonstrates the inextricable link between reproductive health and resource use by providing practical, immediate and lasting benefits to public health, gender equity, food security and biodiversity conservation.

                  Year: 2012

                  Source: Oryx—The International Journal of Conservation

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