HIGHLIGHTS

• Despite significant progress in meeting women’s reproductive needs in Senegal, 31% of pregnancies are still unintended.
• As part of the Pathways Project, we are collaborating with the Department of Maternal and Child Health of Senegal to improve family planning outcomes.
• Our work will focus on how Pathways data could be used to meaningfully shape activities and improve outcomes in districts across Senegal.

The Challenge

Despite significant progress in meeting women’s reproductive needs in Senegal, 31% of pregnancies are still unintended. One-size-fits-all approaches have not been shown to reach or address the needs of more vulnerable groups, which tend to experience worse health outcomes across health areas.

For several years, the Gates Foundation has supported the Pathways Project—a design-driven, interdisciplinary approach to explore the social, cultural, and environmental risk factors impacting reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health and nutrition. To drive impact at scale, Pathways data must be meaningfully used by government actors in their activity planning and implementation of services.

Our Approach

We are collaborating with the Department of Maternal and Child Health of Senegal and the regions of Louga and Matam to support them to use nuanced segmentation data to improve family planning outcomes.

The majority of health activities in Senegal are planned and implemented at a district level. We will be working together with officials in districts across Louga and Matam to better understand how Pathways data could be used to meaningfully shape their activities and improve outcomes. We will seek to understand the barriers that might inhibit meaningful use of this rich data and develop approaches that will facilitate its use by district-level stakeholders.

Takeaway

Interested in our work applying behavioral science to global health? Email health@ideas42.org or reach out to us on LinkedIn to join the conversation.