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Bulthuis, Susan, Kok, Maryse, Onvlee, Olivier, O'Byrne, Thomasena, Amon, Samuel, Namakula, Justine, Chikaphupha, Kingsley, Gerold, Jana, Mansour, Wesam, Raven, Joanna 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4112-6959, E. W Broerse, Jacqueline and Dieleman, Marjolein
(2023)
'How to scale-up: a comparative case study of scaling up a district health management strengthening intervention in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda'. BMC Health Services Research, Vol 23, e35.
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s12913-023-09034-1.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background
The need to scale up public health interventions in low- and middle-income countries to ensure equitable and sustainable impact is widely acknowledged. However, there has been little understanding of how projects have sought to address the importance of scale-up in the design and implementation of their initiatives. This paper aims to gain insight into the facilitators of the scale-up of a district-level health management strengthening intervention in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda.
Methods
The study took a comparative case study approach with two rounds of data collection (2019 and 2021) in which a combination of different qualitative methods was applied. Interviews and group discussions took place with district, regional and national stakeholders who were involved in the implementation and scale-up of the intervention.
Results
A shared vision among the different stakeholders about how to institutionalize the intervention into the existing system facilitated scale-up. The importance of champions was also identified, as they influence buy-in from key decision makers, and when decision makers are convinced, political and financial support for scale-up can increase. In two countries, a specific window of opportunity facilitated scale-up. Taking a flexible approach towards scale-up, allowing adaptations of the intervention and the scale-up strategy to the context, was also identified as a facilitator. The context of decentralization and the politics and power relations between stakeholders involved also influenced scale-up.
Conclusions
Despite the identification of the facilitators of the scale-up, full integration of the intervention into the health system has proven challenging in all countries. Approaching scale-up from a systems change perspective could be useful in future scale-up efforts, as it focuses on sustainable systems change at scale (e.g. improving district health management) by testing a combination of interventions that could contribute to the envisaged change, rather than horizontally scaling up and trying to embed one particular intervention in the system.
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