“I am a newly married person, and the messages on the billboard have given me a lot of ideas about pregnant women and children, especially about their food intake…as I am a future father I think these messages have helped me.”
— Sohel from Sunamgan
One of the main objectives of SHOUHARDO III’s Health and Nutrition interventions is to have sustained changes in the c community towards adopting positive Health, Hygiene and Nutrition (HHN) behavior, including, but not limited to, nutritious food intake, improved HHN practices, and maintaining health-seeking behavior beyond the program tenure. The program designed a set of strategies focusing on
- building the capacity of households to avail the opportunities of receiving health and nutrition services and adopting optimum health care practices at the household level, and
- strengthening the health system for rendering timely health and nutrition services from health posts to improve the health and wellbeing of poor and extreme poor pregnant and lactating women (PLW), children under 5 years of age, and adolescent girls.
To disseminate key messages on health hygiene and nutrition, SHOUHARDO III organized more than 33,500 courtyard sessions with different community groups and installed 25 billboards at 13 Upazilas reaching more than 9,500 households. To engage men and boys in the larger agenda of improved HHN practices, SHOUHARDO III also organizes community sessions with religious leaders after Friday Prayers (Jummah). More than 20,000 men and boys have participated in these sessions. Messages on good HHN practices are also broadcasted through community radio and local cable TV networks.
To strengthen public and private health hygiene and nutrition services, the program has continued advocacy with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoH&FW) and, facilitates Community Score Card (CSC) process to improve the quality of services in the community clinics. Previous interventions included forming functional community groups and community support groups through training, ensuring medicines and equipment supply.
To reach the last mile in delivering health and nutrition services, SHOUHARDO III trained local service providers (LSP) of Social Health Enterprise (SHE) formerly known as Private Community Skilled Birth Attendants (PCSBA), Growth Monitoring Promoters, enhanced the capacity of Social Marketing Company’s Blue Star providers, and strengthened collaboration with NGOs for ensuring Growth Monitoring and Promotion (GMP) activities in hard-to-reach areas. For five years, SHOUHARDO III distributed commodity rations to 56,679 pregnant and lactating women (PLW) then shifted to monthly cash transfers to improve their nutritional status.