The global health policy environment advocates for service integration at the point of health care delivery in order to provide affordable, accessible, and equitable and quality community-based care. “Service integration” is the packaging of services in order to deliver them together as a comprehensive whole for the purpose of making them more accessible and more responsive to the needs of individuals, families and communities. Service integration is important because it removes fragmentation, strengthens linkages and coordination between the services, promotes universal access to a broad range of services, and improves service management and delivery for an efficient and high-quality service, which leads to improved outputs of healthcare delivery. This policy brief draws on local experiences in Malawi, which have shown that two districts (Thyolo and Lilongwe districts) have integrated the delivery of community-based nursing activities, including maternal and child health and school health services. It discusses the viable policy options in integrating school health and mother and child health programmes and makes actionable recommendations.
Related Publications
