Designing for Impact and Institutionalization: Applying Systems Thinking to Sustainable Postpartum Family Planning Approaches for First-Time Mothers in Bangladesh

Integrated service delivery approaches have shown promise to increase use of services including postpartum family planning (PPFP) by young, first-time mothers (FTMs) but have proven challenging to scale and institutionalize. Integration adds complexity, requiring careful assessment of effects on a range of key system functions from demand creation and service delivery to oversight and governance. Through an innovative design process, we selected approaches to increase FTMs’ PPFP use through existing health systems. We generated programmatic options and then sought to select approaches based on (1) potential impact on FTMs’ PPFP uptake and (2) potential to institutionalize in the health system. The latter represented an innovation in addressing management systems’ drivers of scalability and sustainability; to accomplish it, we developed a participatory design process to assess the potential of an approach to be institutionalized in a specific context. We adapted a management systems theory, the Viable System Model (VSM), which presents 5 essential organizational functions and the relations required between them to improve the viability (performance and institutionalization) of organizational systems. Drawing from the VSM, we developed a process for reviewing the effects of proposed approaches on provider workload, client flow, infrastructure, revisions to guidelines and job descriptions, coordination and management, and information systems. The VSM provided a structure to identify potential displacement of capacity in the health system and mitigate often neglected organizational challenges that compromise institutionalization. The process informed the elimination of approaches with potential for impact but that had deal-breakers to institutionalization, such as increased workload or shifted job descriptions, in the Bangladeshi context. For the selected approaches, consideration of systems elements fostered discussion of expected risks to institutionalization, highlighting needed mitigation efforts and monitoring during implementation.