Health & Nutrition Program Support
Strengthen programs from planning to delivery.
Helping NGOs, development partners and public institutions strengthen the planning, leadership, learning and local capability behind health and nutrition programs in Lao PDR.
Making programs work in practice
Health and nutrition programs rely on strong technical knowledge. They also depend on the people and processes that turn plans into action.
Teams need clear priorities. Partners across different levels need to communicate and coordinate. Trainers need the capability to develop others. And implementation experience needs to become practical learning.
Katalyst helps strengthen these foundations through program planning, implementation learning, practical leadership development, Training of Trainers, coaching and field support.
Practical support across delivery
Learn from implementation
Strengthen planning
Build practical leadership
Improve coordination
Develop trainers
Support field application
Selected work
Learning from implementation across the health system
The World Bank needed to understand how the Health and Nutrition Services Access Project was working in practice across different levels and locations.
Katalyst was commissioned to design and conduct five Disbursement-Linked Indicator Learning Reviews: one national review and provincial reviews in Vientiane Province, Savannakhet, Luang Prabang and Xiengkhuang.
Before the reviews began, Katalyst examined project documents and consulted the World Bank task team, Ministry of Health, DFAT, the Global Fund and WHO. That groundwork shaped the learning questions, agendas and an inclusive Lao-language methodology designed to draw out practical experience from across the health system.
The reviews brought together national, provincial and district health officials and frontline implementers, including doctors, nurses and health-center staff.
Katalyst facilitated each review and analyzed the evidence across locations and indicators. The final report gave the World Bank and its partners a consolidated picture of implementation grounded in the experience of the people delivering HANSA.
Taking Training of Trainers into the field
As SNV’s nutrition project in Houaphanh expanded from six pilot villages to 35, its District Nutrition Teams needed to strengthen how they trained and supported others.
Katalyst has worked with SNV for more than two years to build that capability. Training of Trainers has been central, focusing on preparation, questioning, participant engagement, audience adaptation and coaching, supported by Lao-language materials and repeated practice.
Refresher training and coaching during field delivery then helped team members strengthen the skills in real sessions and apply feedback immediately.
The work has helped SNV build training capability inside the teams responsible for carrying the nutrition work forward.
Houaphanh · in the field
Supporting practical leadership across the health system
Government partners working with WHO on vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization needed to lead and coordinate work across central and subnational levels.
Katalyst designed and delivered a practical leadership program focused on credibility, communication, trust, engagement, motivation and working effectively across different levels of the system.
Participants applied the learning to their own roles and identified practical actions to strengthen how they led and worked with others.
Strengthening the annual planning process
The LuxDev Health and Nutrition Programme was preparing for its annual planning cycle. The team needed practical support that would strengthen both the planning process and the work that followed.
Katalyst designed and delivered a focused capacity-building session that connected communication, problem-solving and time management directly with the team’s planning and implementation responsibilities.
The session gave participants practical ways to communicate priorities, address problems and manage competing demands during planning and implementation.
that works.Vientiane
Strengthening management communication
Katalyst designed and delivered Feedback that Works, a tailored one-day program for Swiss Red Cross senior and mid-level managers in Vientiane.
The program gave managers practical ways to handle positive and corrective feedback, respond to difficult reactions and conduct more substantial feedback meetings, while accounting for cultural differences in how feedback is delivered and received.
Swiss Red Cross later brought Katalyst back to facilitate a staff retreat for 35 team members, focused on communication and team development.
Practical support for stronger delivery
From implementation learning and program planning to Training of Trainers and field coaching, Katalyst helps partners strengthen the practical capabilities that effective delivery depends on.