Enabling the conditions for field-wide transformation
This story explores how community health workers in Sub-Saharan Africa moved from the margins of healthcare to become recognised, paid professionals integrated into national health systems.
It focuses on the emerging alignment and relationships between the nonprofit Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC), the funder Johnson & Johnson Foundation and the School of System Change, to show how multiple actors with different roles can come together to create the enabling conditions for systemic transformation.
It demonstrates that field-level transformation requires diverse interventions working symbiotically in coherence over time, that embraces messiness, non- linear progress and the patient work of building collaborative infrastructure across organisational boundaries.
Dive in
The full story is available as a downloadable PDF. It is accompanied by a short slide deck designed to support facilitators to bring the story into learning spaces — whether as a brief anecdote or a deeper exploration — inviting reflection on systems change practice and the roles we each play within the systems we are part of.
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