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Information for USAID Missions

Overview of the Evidence to Action (E2A) Project

Evidence to Action for Strengthened Family Planning and Reproductive Health Services for Women and Girls (E2A) is USAID’s global flagship project for scaling up effective, evidence-based FP/RH practices, strengthening sustainable approaches for improved quality family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) service delivery, and ensuring that women and girls have access to quality FP/RH services through all stages of the reproductive lifecycle.

Awarded on September 30, 2011, this cooperative agreement is led by Pathfinder International in partnership with ExpandNet, IntraHealth International, Management Sciences for Health and PATH.

Missions and Regional Bureaus can utilize the services of E2A to support country-level and regional programs. This may include:

  1. Assessing and documenting the effectiveness of FP/RH and other best practices in health service delivery along the continuum from emerging to proven best practices.
  2. Supporting the systematic introduction and scale-up of FP/RH best practices while building local capacity for initiatives such as (examples):
    1. youth-friendly approaches and reaching young, first-time parents;
    2. integration of FP into health (including maternal and child health, HIV, Nutrition, WASH) and non-health (including environment, workplace) initiatives;
    3. task-shifting, including for Long Acting and Reversible Contraceptives and Permanent Methods; and
    4. gender-equitable practices, including male engagement, that improve access and utilization of services by women and girls.
  3. Supporting the implementation of facility- and community-based FP/RH quality improvement/service delivery strengthening activities within ongoing national, regional or sub-regional programs.
  4. Serving as a means for missions to draw on PRH core funds for introduction and testing of FP/RH interventions that fall within E2A’s mandate, in this way co-sharing the cost of technical assistance. Small-scale demonstration activities that require testing before scale up may benefit.
  5. Supporting the implementation of large scope of works within the mission’s current portfolio. E2A is able to receive field support from all funding streams (e.g., HIV, Child Survival, Economic Support, etc.) and implement relevant programs accordingly.

Advantages of working with E2A

Centrally funded cooperative agreements, such as E2A, are competitively bid at a global level and are awarded to support USAID/Washington core-funded initiatives, as well as mission-specified activities worldwide. The agreement therefore allows a USAID mission or regional office to access technical assistance to support a distinct local or regional activity that fits within the terms and scope of the cooperative agreement without additional competition and in a timely manner.

The E2A field support mechanism brings:

  • Expertise: Strong partnership with significant global and local expertise: E2A’s key and resource partners across the world bring many years of experience, strong in-country presence in over 74 countries and technical leadership - in both FP/RH programs specifically and in development more broadly - that becomes readily available to the mission through field support.
  • Flexibility: Field support can be issued at any time throughout the year during the life of the E2A award, and activities can be implemented up through the end of the E2A award (September 30, 2019).

How USAID Missions and Regional Offices can access the services of E2A

  1. A mission or regional technical officer expresses interest via email to the AOR based in Washington, DC: Patricia MacDonald ([email protected]). The email may include: the general scope of work for the activity; estimated funding available; period of performance; and description of how the activity falls within the broad mandateof the E2A cooperative agreement.
  2. The AOR reviews the scope of work for appropriate fit within the overall E2A program description and helps to facilitate direct communication between the mission/regional office and E2A.
  3. The mission/regional office notifies E2A of their interest in utilizing field support through E2A and provides further information to E2A. E2A will prepare a work plan and budget for mission review and approval.
  4. The Washington AOR reviews the finalized scope of work, work plan and budget, and provides written USAID/Washington technical approval for the work plan.
  5. Project implementation commences once the field support is in the field support database. Each of the core E2A partner agencies is eligible to be selected by the E2A Partners’ Committee as the lead agency, depending on the technical requirements of the scope of work for the field support activity.