Success Breeds Success: A Case Study in CLA Implementation Across Activities

The USAID/Philippines Health Project (2017–2022) is a portfolio of 11 activities to improve the health of under-served Filipinos. Based on evidence from its 2016 Health Portfolio Evaluation and Project Appraisal Document, USAID/Philippines determined that it is uniquely positioned to strengthen its impact in critical health areas – such as family planning and tuberculosis – by leveraging USAID’s Evaluation Policy and collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) principles.

Faced with implementing partners (IPs) accustomed to working in isolation and generally ambivalent about CLA, the Director of USAID’s Office of Health (OH) established Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting for Improved Health (CLAimHealth) to instill a CLA culture among its activities – across the OH and IPs – to maximize results. USAID/Philippines, in partnership with CLAimHealth, cultivated two key resources: 1) a coordination framework that facilitates collaboration among IPs and 2) a CLA technical working group (CLA TWG) tasked to support and oversee CLA processes in the Health Project, easing the way for partners in this undertaking.

Comprising representatives from both the OH and the Health Project activities, the CLA TWG gathers key players bimonthly to leverage data, learning, and other resources, fostering greater collaboration across activities and geographic areas and improving efficiencies. They use the coordination framework -- informed by priorities identified in a CLA Maturity Matrix exercise for the AORs and IPs – to guide these discussions and promote ownership of the CLA process. TWG members are already discovering new ways of working throughout the program cycle to meet their targets and improve health outcomes.