Ethiopia Integrated Family Health Program Plus

The Integrated Family Health Program (IFHP Plus) supported USAID/Ethiopia's strategic objective of investing in people and was an extension of the original IFHP program. Working across the four largest and most populous regions (Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, SNNP) in Ethiopia, IFHP Plus, USAID’s flagship bilateral family and community health program, provided an integrated package of services to improve the health of rural families, especially mothers, newborns, and children.

IFHP Plus supported the Federal Ministry of Health and Regional Health Bureaus to strengthen the National Health Extension Program, working in some 3,000 primary health care units with about 30,000 health extension workers (HEWs). Through health sector partnerships, community mobilization, and behavior change communications models, the project aims, to improve family planning and MNCH services and practices; to increase the availability and quality of service delivery, products, and information; and to strengthen the national health system through review meetings and systematic supportive supervision. IFHP Plus was a lead technical adviser and partner in some of the major innovations that Ethiopia’s health program has undertaken, at scale: provision of contraceptive implants by HEWs, national scale implementation of integrated community case management, malaria control, community nutrition, and the introduction of family health cards.

The IFHP Plus project was implemented jointly by Pathfinder International and JSI in conjunction with local partners. It was a follow on from JSI's Essential Services for Health in Ethiopia, which ran for eight years, the Family Planning/Reproductive Health Project, implemented by Pathfinder, and the jointly implemented Ethiopia Integrated Family Health Program.

Watch a video about IFHP's work strengthening nutrition services in Ethiopian communities.

Watch a video about IFHP's work strengthening the cold chain and immunization services in Ethiopian communities.