Promoting Rights Organizing for Health is an initiative of G-Watch and Accountability Research Center on strategic approach to accountability in health. It aims to improve public health governance in ensuring quality reproductive, maternal and newborn, children and adolescents health services accessible to all through organizing, monitoring, coalition-building, advocacy and learning of monitors and accountability frontliners of G-Watch’s local core groups, other partner civil society organizations in collaboration with allied local government units.
PRO-Health specifically engages three health programs/ policies of the government for the first year: (1) Reproductive Health and Responsible Parenthood, (2) First 1000 Days; and (3) Mental Health for youth and students. The main target of monitoring will be facilities, services and medicines in barangay health units, relevant procurement activities and performance of public health professionals.
The initiative is part of an ongoing cross-country initiative of ARC to learn with, from and for frontline rights and accountability defenders. In the face of both ongoing shrinking of civic space and the pandemic, questions of how to bolster staying power for frontline organizers become even more urgent, particularly in identifying and developing innovative solutions to age-old and structural challenges and problems made complicated by climate change, digital age and other changes in context.
As an action research initiative, PRO-Health aims to document, track and learn on four main outcomes through :
A crucial component of the PRO-Health initiative, hence, is documentation, tracking and learning, which involves looking into progress and lessons on organizational capacity, coalition-building and generating government response to improve health situation.
To start consolidating the PRO-Health network at the national level through shared learning, analysis and agenda on the monitoring results, PRO-Health learning exchanges shall be held, convening volunteer-monitors, accountability frontliners and G-Watch core members from PRO-Health sites and partners. The first one will be on November 24-26 to convene local coordinators from sites with most progress in implementing their monitoring plans. The second one with all the sites and with more representatives from sites and partners will take place mid next year.
For more information on PRO-Health: check out:
https://g-watch.org/news-release/g-watch-makes-first-move-pro-health-pasig-city
PRO-Health health monitoring utilizes a set of monitoring tools which checks government reproductive, maternal, neonatal, children and adolescent health programs and services, while serving as the main health education and information tool of the initiative.