Project profile — Support to the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health (CanWaCH) 2016-2020

The expected outcomes for this project include: (1) improved use of data/measures to inform performance and decision-making; (2) enhanced knowledge sharing of best practices in women’s, adolescents’ and children’s health among network partners, including the promotion of gender equality through women’s, adolescents’ and children’s health programming; and (3) improved engagement of stakeholders in women’s, adolescents’ and children’s health issues.

Results achieved as of the end of the project (May 2021) include: (1) designed and launched the Project Explorer platform, which houses data on over 1200 projects. 95% of CanWaCH members have entered projects in the platform. This contributed to an improved access and use of health data to inform performance and decision-making by Canadian organizations working in the global health sector; (2) funded six projects through the Canadian Collaborative for Global Health initiative, which tackled diverse data challenges and incubated potential solutions using multi-sectoral partnerships; (3) hosted nine flagship events over the life of the project, and numerous high-level events such as roundtables between Canadian government ministers and Canadian health partners, the 2017 Global Adolescent Health Conference and the 2019 international development week. These events contributed to a strengthened engagement between CanWaCH, global health partners, academia, the Canadian government and public; (4) designed and delivered Gender Equality Training Modules to 136 representatives from 40 Canadian organizations working in global health, increasing their capacity to deliver gender-transformative and rights-based approaches through their respective programming; and (5) launched the Lead On Canada (LoC) Public Engagement Campaign in 2018 which amplified CanWaCH members’ work and increased their capacity to reach Canadians, particularly for lower-resourced Small and Medium Organizations. In doing so, the project was able to increase awareness of reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health issues among Canadians, as evidenced by over 60,000 visits of LoC products during the project’s final quarter.