Over the past five years, HSDF has supported the implementation of the Nigeria Healthcare Quality Initiative (NHQI) in over 130 primary and secondary (public and private) health facilities in Lagos, Imo, and Niger State. The NHQI was conceived to improve maternal and newborn health (MNH) outcomes by addressing key system-wide constraints that impede the sustained achievement of better health outcomes.

Post-pregnancy family planning (PPFP) focuses on the prevention of unintended and closely spaced pregnancies in the first 12 months post pregnancy (irrespective of pregnancy outcome) and is considered a life-saving intervention for mothers and their children. Post-pregnancy women are among those populations with the greatest unmet need for family planning (FP), yet they often do not receive the information and services they need to prevent unintended pregnancies.

The NHQI team together with frontline providers applied quality improvement (QI) principles to improve the integration of FP counseling into routine post-partum services in 35 private sector facilities in Lagos State, Nigeria.

During this webinar, hosted by the International Society for Quality in Health Care, the HSDF team introduced the NHQI and laid the context for the PPFP initiative, described the application of improvement methods to integrate PPFP into routine post-partum services. We also shared the results we obtained, and data from other implementers and discussed implementation challenges, limitations of approach, and lessons learnt.

Through this webinar, participants had an enhanced understanding of the NHQI, learnt how to modify the learning collaborative to ensure generation, and implementation of change ideas. In addition, participants learnt to identify and mitigate potential challenges that may be encountered in designing a PPFP intervention in the private sector that integrates QI principles.