Dyness Kasungami Presented on Child Health Program Governance at APHA 2021

Dyness Kasungami was invited to join a panel at this year’s APHA annual conference on Global early childhood ‘Thrive’ strivings: Building child- and family-centric collaborative initiatives during the pandemic & scaling beyond. 

Director of the Child Health Task Force Secretariat, Dyness explored some of the major challenges in child health, in particular fragmentation of programs at the global and country levels that leads to duplication, lack of coordination between partners, and ultimately poor health outcomes. These challenges became clear through the task force-facilitated co-creation workshops with stakeholders in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, which used human-centered design to re-imagine the current model of technical assistance for maternal, newborn, and child health. The principles and critical shifts created through this work guide the task force’s approach to strengthening country ownership, cultivating trust and sovereignty, and building sustainability and resilience. 

Led by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc., the Child Health Task Force generates evidence on how to implement equitable, comprehensive, and integrated programs that will lead to better outcomes for children. As a learning community, the task force facilitates evidence-sharing, provides countries and child health stakeholders access to a pool of technical experts, tested implementation tools, and approaches, and engages members to translate knowledge into better practices. Its network has grown to over 2,000 members from 80 countries and 300 organizations. 

The task force recently released its five-year strategy to end preventable under-five deaths and achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals to ensure that children are able to thrive, reach their full potential, and become agents of change in their communities.