A Model for Making Interministerial Collaboration Work: Implementing Malawi's Youth-Friendly Health Services Strategy

This brief demonstrates how national, district, and community project partners in a Malawi district were able to effectively leverage all five components needed to achieve interministerial support and collaboration for the successful implementation of the Youth-Friendly Health Services (YFHS) Strategy. The government of Malawi and HP+ achieved this success by strengthening these five distinct and essential components for achieving collective impact: a common agenda, mutually reinforcing activities, shared measurement systems, continuous communication, and a backbone organization. The activity succeeded as communities came together to address significant challenges around forced/child marriage, teen pregnancy, and incidence of school dropout, among other issues. In addition to generally catalyzing support for YFHS in the selected district, the approach resulted in several important lessons for other multisectoral initiatives: 1) sustain momentum through regular communication at all levels; 2) use collaboration to support commitment to expanding access to YFHS; and 3) employ real-time multilevel interministerial collaboration to provide quick access to essential information.

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