A Strategic Approach for Re-Positioning Family Planning within Comprehensive Community-Based Health Services: The Connect Project, Tanzania

Colin Baynes, Columbia University and Ifakara Health Institute (IHI)
Emmanuel Tluway, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI)
Selemani Mbuyita, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI)
Godfrey Mbaruku, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI)

The Connect Project in Tanzania is a strategy for scaling-up a field trial to become a national program. A randomized control trial, it operationalizes and evaluates the national primary healthcare policy by trialing a community-health worker program to reduce child mortality. Currently, Connect is expanding the project to address the inadequate availability of reproductive health services to study populations and the tendency of research to produce nonreplicable service delivery capabilities. Connect is solving this through the strategic introduction of DMPA injectable contraception into its service system. This is a process of organizational change that requires working in phases guided by evidence from forms of implementation research that are integrated into the workings and design of the RCT. This design permits a scale up of the innovation into a trial of fertility and MDG 5 impact. Details of each phase, and the feasibility for the national scale-up, are reviewed and discussed.