The Synergy of CLA & Innovative Communication Approaches in Compounding Malaria Indicator

Malaria is a disease that inexplicably affects the vulnerable rural population and it continues to kill millions of people especially children under five and greatly impedes overall socio-economic progress and lowers the country’s GDP. Holistic behavioral change is fundamental in malaria control and prevention, and achieving sustained behavior change requires relentless reminders and innovative and reflective thinking of communication approaches. This case study therefore examines the effectiveness of the USAID’s Malaria Action Program for Districts in employing a CLA approach in its innovative communication approaches in reducing malaria related indicators in the different regions of implementation.

To sustainably accomplish this, the program embraced the different key fundamentals of the CLA approach, and these were, strong internal collaboration within the program, like the different consortium members, key team members like the communication, Monitoring and the Technical team members. Calculative external collaborations, technical evidence base, scenario planning, M&E for learning, Pause and reflect sessions, Adaptive management, a strong culture of openness, relationship & networks, continuous learning and improvement and decision making, budgeting and staff composition were all employed in the implementation of this approach. Leveraging on all these provided a smooth sail in harnessing sustainable change in the different areas served.

The CLA approach was incorporated in the overall project design. For all the three project’s result areas to be achieved, it necessitated collaboration with the national, district and community leadership, and this collaborative learning of the innovative communication approaches helped to improve malaria related indicators.