The Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health (PACFaH) is a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported project implemented from November 2014 – September 2017. The aim of the project is to catalyze the Nigerian government’s responsiveness to commitments through a range of advocacy activities initiated by sub-grantee Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), which will build new partnerships of CSOs, the media and individual activists to engage government using evidence and strategic approaches.
It’s overarching goal was to strengthen indigenous CSOs to form strong supportive partnerships which will work together to advocate for accountability, transparency and responsiveness of government at the national and state levels in the area of policy, budgets and administrative regulations for child and family health.
The main thrust of the project is evidence-based advocacy conducted jointly by the coalition partners and focused on four key areas that impact on child and family health namely – family planning (FP), nutrition, routine immunization and childhood killer diseases with special focus on pneumonia and diarrhea. Different coalition partners lead the advocacy issues- routine immunization – Community Health Research (CHR), nutrition- Civil Society for Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN), childhood killer diseases with special focus on pneumonia and diarrhea – the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN). The Civil Society for Legislative Advocacy (CISLAC) and the Federation of Muslim Women Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN) provide crosscutting roles with the former focusing on media engagement while the later on traditional, faith based and grassroots mobilization respectively.
These CSOs worked with and encouraged government to improve the understanding of the challenges that confront child and family health (CFH) and to mobilize resources to address CFH by developing and fulfilling appropriate policy, adequate budgetary and administrative commitments.
The Association for the Advancement of Family Planning (AAFP) a registered national coalition of Family Planning (FP) advocates in Nigeria comprising government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), development partners, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), as well as the private sector (AAFP) led FP advocacy at the national level