How can we build local ownership into a global mandate for cold chain management?
Strengthening Local Capacities for Health Systems
UNICEF
CHALLENGE
Complexity doesn’t build capacity.
Effective Vaccine Management (EVM) is a critical process that assesses and prioritizes improvements in a country’s immunization supply chain. A key component of the process is the EVM Assessment Tool, a digital app that allows people working along the vaccine supply chain to identify opportunities and create tailored plans for improvements to their community’s chain. There is an opportunity to elevate the conversation to yield systemic impact beyond the cold chain—starting with building local communities of practice. But in order to do that we must simplify and decentralize a complicated and complex process as well as build capacity to allow for a bottom-up approach and encourage local ownership.
FIRSTHAND INSIGHT
People will embrace and advocate for a new tool once they understand its broader meaning and impact; just teaching them how to use it is not enough.
Add purpose to process.
SOLUTION
A bottom-up approach to supply chain efficacy.
Confidence, connection and ownership are built when participants are invited to create, not just participate in, immunization supply chain trainings. To ensure successful adoption and use of the EVM Assessment app, a collaborative design research process was conducted in Jordan, Bhutan and Nigeria, representing three key regions for the EVM roll-out. Prototyping and capacity building workshops pointed to a bottom-up approach to implementing the assessment app that empowered local workers to be the champions of the tool’s success.
OUTPUT
This unconventional ground-up approach to building local ownership of the vaccine supply chain received the support of EVM’s partners, demonstrating a shift in the way large organizations empower people in-country to be the stewards of change.
“Breaking down the process and the complexity of the content, designing tools and curriculums that are human-centred was crucial to the success of this initiative.”
FIRSTHAND PROVIDED:
Workshop design, design research, communications design, support for facilitation and planning. Visual design, copywriting.
