Lowlands Health Activity

The purpose of this Activity is to improve health and nutrition outcomes by increasing access, quality, and utilization of RMNCAH-N services in pastoral geographies of Ethiopia. To achieve the IRs outlined in Section 5, the Recipient must design evidence-based, contextualized, gender- and youth-sensitive, and pragmatic approaches and interventions for pastoral areas. All applications should propose the ideal mix of interventions to improve access, quality, and utilization of RMNCAH-N services. Applicants must develop a comprehensive plan that includes cost-effective, sustainable (i.e., beyond development partner funding) interventions and put together a plan that measures the cost of each proposed intervention at district or health facility level. The Recipient must plan to engage in cost-effective analysis on proposed interventions throughout the Activity to inform its retooling of interventions towards maximum results. The Activity will also have a $1 million crisis modifier set aside and will be flexible to identify, assess, and support emergency response efforts to man-made or natural disasters, including disease outbreaks, drought, conflict, etc., that can save lives, restore/sustain health service delivery, and protect critical interventions for community health, while maintaining public health development gains.

USAID's New Partnerships Initiative (NPI) aims to diversify USAID's partner base by creating avenues for new and underutilized partners to work with USAID. Through NPI, the Agency promotes local leadership, seeks bold and innovative approaches to fostering self-reliance, and identifies new sources of funding to sustain partnership and scale impact. As such, focus on local capacity development (structured and with milestones documenting progress), knowledge, ownership (through co-financing agreements), and sustainability (cost-effective and beyond development partner funding) is encouraged for all applications. Most importantly, USAID/Ethiopia embraces and would like to foster out-of-the-box' thinking to meet the new, ever-evolving demands and challenges that the Activity's pastoral areas are facing in health programming. Applicants are expected to propose solutions that meet the following parameters:

o Are verified acceptable to and adopted by the community

o Access and maximize local assets, knowledge, and values

o Are cost-effective in attaining desired results

o Have high potential for sustainability without development partner funding

o Respect and leverage existing culture, religion, leadership, decision-making. and community structures

o Identify use and local maintenance of appropriate technology