Through a new award from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Bayer Foundation, IntraHealth International will begin a new phase of The Challenge Initiative (TCI) called TCI Next Gen.

IntraHealth has led the francophone West Africa hub of TCI since 2016, which has helped add over 350,000 new contraceptive users in 12 cities throughout francophone West Africa over the past five years. TCI is part of a consortium led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

In this next phase of the project (2021-2025), IntraHealth will use the TCI model in urban areas in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal to reach 350,000 additional family planning users and improve access to high-quality family planning services for 5.5 million women of reproductive age.

Receiving the TCI Next Gen funds to continue this work is a testament to the goals we’ve already achieved.

To achieve TCI’s vision of transforming healthier cities at scale, the francophone West Africa hub will work with local governments in 29 areas to rapidly scale up proven, high-impact family planning interventions. These will focus on adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health, program management, and generating demand for and delivering high-quality services. The hub will help strengthen political and technical leadership and manage and coordinate local health systems in specific cities. The team will pair this approach with community accountability mechanisms to increase sustainability and ownership of the program.

“I’m so proud that we’ve been able to make sure women and girls have access to family planning services and know their options when it comes to contraception,” says Hawa Talla, IntraHealth’s leader of TCI in West Africa. “Receiving the TCI Next Gen funds to continue this work is a testament to the goals we’ve already achieved.”

In partnership with municipalities and local health systems, the hub has expanded access to family planning by helping cities integrate high impact interventions such as universal referral and post-partum family planning while also working to make those services more youth-friendly.

To create demand for services, the hub works with local community-based radio stations and organizations, youth ambassadors, and religious leaders to promote the benefits of family planning, dispel myths and rumors about contraception, and encourage men to be involved in family planning decisions.

TCI has programs in 111 cities worldwide, with the potential to reach another 60 cities through 6 Hubs (East Africa, Francophone West Africa, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines) with this new award. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health leads TCI.

TCI Next Gen is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Bayer Foundation.