Partnerships

 

HRP engages with a wide range of partners and stakeholders. These partnerships are essential for achieving four strategic objectives:  

 

Network of Infertility Non-state Actors (NSAs): In 2020, HRP partnered with NSAs to deliver a series of educational webinars related to infertility focusing on: impact of COVID-19 on fertility services; prevention of infertility; organizing fertility care in resource-poor settings; and achieving universal access to fertility care, with a particular focus on reaching programme managers and policy-makers in West Africa. HRP also collaborated with the Network to develop, reprint and widely disseminate the updated WHO fact sheet on fertility. 

Global Network for the Independent Evaluation of STI Point-of-care Tests: This network comprises the ministries of health, national research centres and 27 hospitals from 14 countries, as well as six WHO collaborating centres and four test manufacturers. It seeks to improve access to STI testing among populations in need – including key populations – through developing an evidence-based, scalable model for introducing and implementing STI diagnostics. In 2020, the laboratory capacity to conduct STI testing – including reference testing as well as quality control and external quality assurance – was strengthened across all 14 countries participating in the Network. 

Technical assistance coordination mechanism for SRHR of adolescents and youth: HRP collaborates with several global and regional partners to provide technical support to nine countries in scaling up adolescent sexual and reproductive health programmes with a focus on contraception. In 2020, it responded to technical assistance (TA) requests from nine countries in three WHO regions using a specially designed TA coordination mechanism. This involved working across all three levels of WHO and engaging with partner organizations and initiatives such as FP2020, the Ouagadougou Partnership and the Global Financing Facility to provide TA that was effective, timely and efficient (even in the context of COVID-19). 

National parliaments and parliamentarian associations: Within WHO, HRP has pioneered engagement with national parliaments and various parliamentary platforms, including the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF). Among key highlights in 2020, HRP partnered with the IPU, the United Nations Programme to Accelerate an End to Child Marriage and GirlsNotBrides to engage parliamentarians in advocating with their governments and other stakeholders for efforts to address child marriage in the context of COVID-19. It also partnered with EPF to conduct a series of advocacy activities within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and collaborated in the development of the Global Atlas on Abortion and the Fertility Policies Atlas for Europe. 

Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health: This Network is a partnership of governments, implementation partners and funding agencies working with 11 countries to ensure that every pregnant woman, newborn and child receives good-quality care with equity and dignity. HRP led a scoping review to identify measures of experience of facility-based care throughout the continuum of care for pregnant women and newborns, informing and facilitating the country activities across the Network. 

QUALI-DEC project: The QUALI-DEC project seeks to improve decision-making in childbirth by health professionals and by women themselves through developing evidence-based tools to guide choices before or during labour, reducing non-medically justified caesarean sections and encouraging natural childbirth. In 2020, countries participating in the study finished the baseline formative research and tailored the interventions, including policy-makers and other stakeholders. Dissemination and knowledge transfer plans were drafted in 2020 targeting members of parliament and policy-makers. 

WHO collaborating centres: WHO collaborating centres are research institutes, parts of universities, or academies that carry out activities in support of the WHO's programmes. HRP continues to engage with 33 of WHO’s collaborating centres, which contribute valuable expertise and resources to enable HRP to carry out its full programme of research, including generating evidence for WHO guidelines on SRHR issues. These collaborating centres are from all six WHO regions – one in the African Region, four in the Region of the Americas, three in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, 10 in the European Region, eight in the South-East Asia Region and seven in the Western Pacific Region. 

‍WHO Academy: As part of the WHO Transformation, a new focus on learning to build skills and competencies – as well as to make a greater positive impact worldwide – is being realized through the new WHO Academy, which will become a state-of-the-art training institution for the health sector, seeking to reach 10 million learners around the world by 2023. In 2020, the Academy worked closely with HRP to develop and design competency-based learning programmes to accelerate sexual and reproductive health impact. The Academy has embraced SRHR as one of its first priorities, collaborating with HRP on two ambitious products: 

• The “Digital Learning Course on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights” was launched to sustain access to contraceptive services during the COVID-19 pandemic; it is an interactive course on counselling and prescribing of over-the-counter contraception in pharmacies and drug stores. The first version of the course is available through the Academy’s COVID-19 mobile learning app for health workers. Further self-care modules will be developed and added to the SRHR course, covering topics such as HPV self-sampling; self-collection of STI samples, including self-testing for HIV; and pregnancy self-tests. 

• The Midwifery education toolkit brings together multiple training courses on sexual, reproductive, newborn and mental health interventions for compassionate midwifery care, including during pandemics and for use in fragile and humanitarian settings. It focuses on a midwifery-led model of care, preventing unnecessary interventions yet ensuring life-saving actions, enabling health professionals to work effectively in a multidisciplinary team. One of the first courses under development is the “Essential Postpartum Family Planning Counselling Course”.