Archive for: Scale-up


The Health of People and Environment–Lake Victoria Basin (HoPE–LVB), a cross-sectoral integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) effort implemented by Pathfinder International and a range of partners in Kenya and Uganda during 2011-2019, aimed to improve interconnected health, environment, and development challenges in an ecologically biodiverse region. After an external evaluation in 2018 documented the results of the project, partners and donors were interested in learning about the ongoing sustainability of the project activities to draw lessons for designing future projects. Therefore in 2022, USAID through the Knowledge SUCCESS project, collaborated with a philanthropic partner, Preston-Werner Ventures, to conduct a rapid stock-taking exercise to explore the successes, challenges, and opportunities in scaling-up and sustaining the cross-sectoral programming. This learning brief features the voices from a range of stakeholders that were involved in the project to share their perspectives and knowledge on the scale-up and sustainability of HoPE-LVB activities.

Year: 2022

Source: Knowledge SUCCESS

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The third National Conference on Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) was held in March 2008 Tagatay City, Philippines. The 350 delegates focused on the expansion, strengthening, and advancement of integrated Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) approaches. International partners from a myriad of countries shared PHE methods, models, and networks. Skill building sessions, presentations, demonstrations, and discussions were held to expand PHE knowledge and strengthen partnerships.

Year: 2008

Source: Conservation International

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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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      From the 1980s-1990s the Philippine Government, with help from the United Nations and the academic community, created poverty alleviation projects that linked Population, Health, and Environment (PHE). These PHE projects focused on improving natural resource management, reproductive health services, enhancing food security, and providing Filipinos with more livelihood options. These integrated projects proved to be successful, creating a desire to spread or “scale-up” the PHE approach. Scaling-up has three components: expansion, replication, and collaboration. This report notes several opportunities for scaling-up, such as reaching out to new locations and people, extending pilot projects to policies at local and national levels, and expanding services to current clients. Another key factor for scaling-up the PHE approach is strengthening the national PHE network. A recap of lessons that have been learned through scaling-up is also included.

      Year: 2008

      Source: World Wildlife Fund | Population Reference Bureau

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        This report was commissioned to address the question of what works and what doesn’t work to make PHE programs successful – the most successful being those with the potential for scale or expansion. Findings were derived from document reviews, web searches and interviews with members of the PHE practice community. The report aims to reveal how PHE has evolved to fill an important gap, i.e., a tested approach to working cross-sectorally that achieves results in multiple domains. Its evolution has been both directed and natural. Direction, and ballast, has come from core funders and a group within the community of practice. “Ground-truthing” has come from the vast array of other practitioners. Integration is not easy but with time, resources and skill, it can be successfully achieved under a variety of conditions. Key factors facilitating success are described within. Under select conditions, the approach can work at scale. What scale is most relevant depends on the conservation goal and human/environment interactions.

        Year: 2013

        Source: Evaluation and Research Technologies for Health

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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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            This highly detailed program design manual begins by describing the evolution of PHE integrated projects, and why they remain relevant. It then lays out critical steps for designing and implementing a PHE project. These steps are not strictly sequential; there is more than one successful way to carry out a project. The steps are provided as a guideline for project designers to determine if they are on the right track. This document also aims to achieve longer and larger success in PHE projects by creating value-added synergies, and including sustainability and scalability in project design. Emphasis is placed on these components as crucial steps to designing a successful integrated project.

            Year: 2007

            Source: United States Agency for International Development

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              PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc.’s, Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Project (IPOPCORM) has been scaled-up in the coastal Philippines. In the Siquijor Province, as IPOPCORM expanded to cover all 6 municipalities, the local Governments decided to incorporate population and reproductive health into coastal resource management legislation. IPOPCORM also experienced success scaling-up in the Danajon Bank Ecosystem, a biodiversity hotspot that experienced a loss of fisheries resources due to a dense population, leading to greater food insecurity. In this case study, IPOPCORM discusses their accomplishments in both regions and how it was achieved.

              Year: 2006

              Source: PATH Foundation Philippines Inc.

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                This case study, produced as part of JSI’s Best Practices in Scaling Up series, describes the collaboration of population, health, and environmental (PHE) interventions to strengthen development efforts in Madagascar. In the early 2000s, JSI collaborated with various partners to apply PHE initiatives to address inhabitants’ limited access to health care, family planning services, and agricultural extension services. The PHE program noticeably improved key health indicators and land-use practices during its span, and served as a model for other programs seeking to link health and environmental initiatives.

                Year: 2008

                Source: John Snow, Inc.

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                  Small-scale pilot projects have demonstrated that integrated population, health and environment approaches can address the needs and rights of vulnerable communities. However, these and other types of health and development projects rarely influence larger policies and programmes. ExpandNet, a network of health professionals working on scaling up, argues this is because projects are often not designed with sustainability and scaling up in mind. This paper shows how this new approach is being applied and the initial lessons from its use in the Health of People and Environment in the Lake Victoria Basin Project (HoPE-LVB) currently underway (2011-2017) in Uganda and Kenya. Specific emerging lessons are: 1) ongoing, meaningful stakeholder engagement has significantly shaped the design and implementation, 2) multi-sectoral projects are complex and striving for simplicity in the interventions is challenging, and 3) projects that address a sharply felt need experience substantial pressure for scale up, even before their effectiveness is established. This paper recommends that other projects would also benefit from applying a scale-up perspective from the outset.

                  Year: 2014

                  Source: Reproductive Health Matters

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