The Collaborative Action Strategy for Campaign Effectiveness (CAS) is a customizable framework for ministries of health and other stakeholders to improve campaign effectiveness, efficiency, and equity. The CAS was co-developed by the Health Campaign Effectiveness (HCE) Coalition and over 50 cross-domain partners.Â
CAS.tools is a package of supporting knowledge resources and tools generated from CAS implementation in the two focus countries, Ethiopia and Nigeria, whose governments opted-in to the process. Stakeholders can use CAS.tools to help customize and implement the CAS in their own country or context.
The Collaborative Action Strategy for Campaign Effectiveness (CAS) is a customizable framework to improve health campaign effectiveness. You can learn more about the HCE Coalition-wide CAS (and download the strategy document) here.
The 12 concrete recommendations of the CAS seek to improve health campaign effectiveness at the national and sub-national levels. Collectively, these recommendations propose a meaningful and ambitious shift from the current ‘status quo’ of siloed campaign approaches to country-led, coordinated and integrated health programming.Â
The CAS recommendations are intended to be adaptable and flexible, allowing for country-specific decision-making based on the evidence and what is appropriate for each unique health system, population, and community context.
Phase 1: Initiation/Readiness ensures the Collaborative Action Strategy for Campaign Effectiveness (CAS) aligns with country needs and priorities — and that necessary resources and processes are available or in place before starting customization and implementation.
The Coalition CAS was developed based on findings from over three years of implementation research coordinated by the HCE Coalition and funded by the Gates Foundation. It was drafted by Task Teams comprising representatives from global, regional, and country levels.
The CAS was designed to be country- agnostic with generalized recommendations intended to be translated to different country contexts so they are feasible and able to be implemented into policy. This way it can bring value to any country willing to increase collaboration among its health campaigns.
Phase 2: Customization consists of engaging country-level stakeholders to develop a customized CAS by adapting the generalized recommendations to country-level realities, ecosystems, and overall context, and delineating specific stakeholders, tasks, and timelines for country-level CAS implementation.
Phase 3: Implementation Planning consists of outlining all the tasks necessary for proper implementation of the customized CAS, as well as identifying responsible structures/ stakeholders and the related resources needed to implement.
The CAS provides a framework and foundation for systematic changes in the way campaigns are planned, implemented, monitored, and financed in countries.Â
In order to effectively implement the CAS, changes across a large number of actors, stakeholders, tools, and processes will likely be necessary. These ambitious changes will likely lead to additional resource needs, requiring explicit costing and planning.
Phase 4: Implementation consists of moving from the customized CAS, and planning its implementation, to action. This can happen in parallel to some planning processes.
Because the CAS is an action-oriented strategy that aims to substantially change how campaigns are run, effective implementation of all — or part — of its recommendations will be key to significant, lasting impact and reducing the burden of siloed health campaigns on health systems and communities.
