Core Group

CORE Group, in collaboration with multiple partner and member organizations, has produced a range of state-of-the-art tools, curriculums and technical resources that are listed below.

Program Planning Tools

• NEW! Social Behavior Change for Family Planning
  This curriculum can share basic designing for social behavior change skills without requiring a lot of time or resources. It is designed to be used “off-the-shelf”—which means it is not necessary to bring in an outside trainer. A local staff person or team can use this guide to run a 2.5 day training course that teaches the basics of “designing for behavior change.” This can serve as an energizing starting point for addressing family planning by building skills and helping staff get started in social and behavior change. The concepts and tools can actually be applied to other topics as well, including maternal and child health, nutrition, infectious disease care and control, sanitation, and more.
• Barrier Analysis: A Tool for Improving Behavior Change Communication in Child Suvival and Community Development Programs (2nd reprint 2010)
  A rapid assessment tool used in community health and other community development projects to identify behavioral determinants associated with a particular behavior. These behavioral determinants are identified so that more effective behavior change communication messages, strategies and supporting activities (e.g., creating support groups) can be developed. This Guide is written for trainers to teach others about Barrier Analysis and/or to learn the techniques themselves. It guides trainers through a step-by-step process for conducting the analysis and provides background information on the technique as well as some basic information on behavior change theory. Trainers are encouraged to adapt materials to meet their own needs.

• Designing for Behavior Change Curriculum (2008)
  The "Designing for Behavior Change" curriculum, developed by the CORE Group Social and Behavior Change working group, responds to community health managers' and planners' need for a practical behavioral framework that aids them in planning their projects strategically for maximum effectiveness. The curriculum is built upon the BEHAVE Framework, developed by the Academy for Education Development (AED) and Barrier Analysis, developed by Food for the Hungry. This field-tested, six-day training curriculum enables NGOs and their partners to replicate the behavior change workshops in their organizations and country programs.

• The Care Group Difference: A Guide to Mobilizing Community-Based Volunteer Health Educators (2004)
  This Guide, developed by World Relief, explores the evidence base for the Care Group model, offers criteria to assist project managers in determining the feasibility of using this approach within their own programs, and provides a step-by-step guide for starting and sustaining care groups. A care group is a group of 10 to 15 volunteer, community-based health educators who regularly meet together with project staff for training, supervision and support. Care group volunteers provide peer support, develop a strong commitment to health activities, and find creative solutions to challenges by working together as a group. World Relief pioneered the Care Group model as part of its Vurhonga child survival projects in Mozambique (1995-2003).
• Scale and Scaling Up – A CORE Group Background Paper on Scaling-Up Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Services (2005)
  This paper briefly summarizes definitions, approaches, and challenges to achieving “scale” in community-focused health programs as discussed at the 2005 CORE spring meeting and the USAID child survival and health grants program mini-university. This paper is meant to harmonize a vocabulary for use by NGOs and their partners as they further discuss, debate, and analyze how NGOs and their partners can reach more people with high quality maternal, child and neonatal health interventions.
• Reaching Communities for Child Health: Advancing Health Outcomes through Multi-Sectoral Approaches (2004)
  The purpose of this paper is to explore how multi-sectoral approaches are used within community-based child health and development programs and the evidence-base to support that use. It seeks to answer three questions: 1) how do NGOs define a multi-sectoral platform; 2) how do NGOs implement a multi-sectoral platform to achieve better or more sustainable health outcomes; and 3) how can child health programmers work effectively with other sectors to support community-based improvements in child health.
• Partnership Defined Quality Facilitation Guide (2004)
  CORE Group member Save the Children developed the Partnership Defined Quality (PDQ) methodology to link quality assessment and improvement with community mobilization.   The PDQ process engages communities and health care providers to work together in defining, implementing and monitoring activities intended to improve the quality of care.

Technical Reference Materials

• NEW! Community-Based Tuberculosis Prevention and Care: How and Why to Get Involved

  This document is designed to serve as a handbook, or primer, for NGOs and CSOs that are considering joining the fight against TB. It provides information on TB and how it is prevented, diagnosed, and treated, how TB programs work on the ground, how communities and CSOs can get involved, and special populations that need extra attention. Step-by-step guidance on getting started in addressing TB, pitfalls to avoid, and a list of useful resources are include.

• NEW! Social Mobilization: Lessons from the CORE Group Polio Project in Angola, Ethiopia, and IndiaThe CORE Group Polio Project (CGPP) and its partners in India, Angola, and Ethiopia have led successful social mobilization efforts to reach difficult-to-access populations critical for polio eradication. These include extremely poor rural and urban communities, ethnic and religious minorities who resist immunizing their children, and others such as newborns, pastoralists, migrants, and those in transit across national borders. This report places CGPP within the context of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) that began in 1988, defines and describes three varieties of social mobilization, and presents as case examples CGPP’s successful social mobilization work in India, Angola, and Ethiopia.
• NEW! Better Together: Linking Family Planning and Community Health for Health Equity and Impact This new CORE Group report is based on more than 125 references and provides compelling evidence that integration of family planning is a value-added strategy, saving lives, and spurring progress to prevent diseases, protect the environment, advance food security and nutrition, and improve the health of young people. 
• Now available in Spanish! Helping Babies Breathe (HBB) Implementation Guide
  This new tool is used for advancing sustainable national programs for newborn and maternal health.  For maximum impact, HBB should be integrated into existing newborn or maternal health training, but it can be implemented as a stand-alone program, depending on national priorities.
• Now available in French, Kalenjin, and Kiswahili! Taking Care of Babies at Home: What Families Need to Do
  This flipbook contains key messages that pregnant women and their families need in order to plan care of an infant at home right after birth. It focuses on essential actions families can take both to prevent newborn death and illness and to promote healthy newborn development.
• Updated! Now in French and English! Community Case Management Essentials Guide Known as Community Case Management of Sick Children (CCM), this approach utilizes trained and supervised community members linked to facility-based services to deliver life-saving interventions for sick children, in partnership with their families. CORE Group-- in collaboration with Save the Children, BASICS, and MCHIP-- developed Community Case Management Essentials, a guide that methodically documents what is known about CCM and how to make it work for health program managers.

• C-IMCI Graphic
• C-IMCI Program Guidance Paper (2009)
  An overview of the Community-based Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (C-IMCI) framework. The C-IMCI framework consists of three elements and a multi-sectoral platform that focus on specific behaviors and practices of health workers and caregivers of young children. Included in this document: the history of C-IMCI’s development, its elements, benefits, and rational for use.
• HH/C IMCI Framework – A Facilitator’s Guide for Conducting Country Meetings on HH/C IMCI (2003)
  The purpose of this guide is to assist NGO’s, Ministries of Health, and bilateral and multi-lateral organizations in implementing a two and a half day workshop on Household & Community IMCI.
• Nutrition Program Design Assistant: A Tool For Program Planners
  (Workbook and Reference Guide) (2010)
  The tool includes a workbook and reference guide and is designed to help program planning teams -including those designing USAID Child Survival and Health Grants Program (CSHGP) or Title II food security program proposals- in the design of the nutrition component of their programs. The tool provides guidance on how to compare and contrast approaches and select the most appropriate combination of community-based nutrition approaches for their specific programming needs and geographic target areas.
  Nutrition Program Design Posters
• The Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) Framework
  The Essential Nutrition Actions (ENA) Framework was developed with the support of USAID and has been implemented across Africa and Asia since 1997. It is an operational framework for managing the advocacy, planning and delivery of an integrated package of preventive nutrition actions encompassing infant & young child feeding (IYCF), micronutrients and women's nutrition. There ENA Framework includes 3 main guides:
  1. The Booklet of Key ENA Messages (Word Version)/ French (Word)
  2. ENA Health Worker Training Guide (Word Version)/ French(Word)
  2b. ENA Health Worker Handouts(Word Version)/ French(Word)
  3. ENA Community Volunteers Training Guide (Word Version)/ French(Word)
• The Expansion of Community-based Tuberculosis Programming: Critical Program Design Issues for New Partners (2008)
  This document outlines nine project-design challenges most likely to face those working at the community level. This document should be used as a primer for gaining a better understanding of the challenges community-based TB programs and providers face, as well as some of the ways nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are currently addressing these challenges.
• Tuberculosis Control Programming for PVOs: Facilitator's Manual (2006)
  The purpose of this manual is to assist private voluntary organizations (PVOs) and/or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to organize and facilitate a course on Tuberculosis (TB) Control Programming for PVOs/NGOs at the country or regional level. The curriculum is designed to prepare PVO/NGO and partner staff to implement high quality TB control programming, including diagnosis, case finding, drug supply, information analysis and use, working with partners, communication issues, incentives and enablers, private-public systems, and TB co-infection with HIV.
• The Integration of Vitamin A Supplementation into Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin: A Practical Guide for Africa (English, French) (2004)
  With CORE Group’s support, Helen Keller International created : Integrating Vitamin A Supplementation into Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin: A Practical Guide for Africa. The manual gives an overview of the vitamin A and onchocerciasis problems and provides concrete information on the practical steps and considerations for integration VAS into CDTI. In English and French.
• Maternal Nutrition During Pregnancy and Lactation: Dietary Guide (2004)
  This document provides health workers with information on how to counsel pregnant and lactating women on how to meet increased nutrient requirements through dietary and behavioral changes and other health practices. This document also helps programs develop appropriate protocols and counseling materials on maternal nutrition.
• Positive Deviance/Hearth Materials: A Resource Guide for Sustainably Rehabilitating Malnourished Children
  A Positive Deviance/Hearth Nutrition Program is a home-and neighborhood-based nutrition program for children who are at risk for protein-energy malnutrition in developing countries. The program uses the “positive deviance” approach to identify those behaviors practiced by the mothers or caretakers of well-nourished children from poor families and to transfer such positive practices to others in the community with malnourished children. The “Hearth” or home is the location for the nutrition education and rehabilitation sessions.
• Positive Deviance/Hearth Essentials
  This document identifies several elements that are essential to the implementation of an effective PD/Hearth program. Experience repeatedly shows that these elements cannot be adapted, modified, or skipped altogether without seriously diminishing the effectiveness of the program.
• Humanitarian Pandemic Preparedness – Community Planning and Response Curriculum (2009)
  The partners in the Humanitarian Pandemic Preparedness (H2P) Initiative were able to use developed training curricula for Community Planning and Response in order to minimize morbidity and mortality. The curriculum has separate tracks for district/community leaders and for first responders (community volunteers and workers) at the community level. In addition, comprehensive emergency preparedness and response planning guidance and templates developed for national and district level officials were available. English & Spanish

Monitoring & Evaluation Tools

• NEW! The Mortality Assessment for Health Programs (MAP) System
  

  This manual is a guide for non-governmental organizations carrying out child health programs to assess under-five mortality rates and evaluate programs using the CARE Group Model. By following this manual’s methodology to establish a Mortality Assessment for Health Programs (MAP) System, organizations can collect valid and precise information about vital events and detect statistically significant changes in under-five mortality rates over the life of a child health program. Our hope is that NGOs will find this manual practical and feasible to assess correlations between program activities and mortality trends in a variety of settings.

• Maternal and Newborn Standards and Indicators Compendium
  Designed to assist program designers working for NGOs develop high quality programs focused on women and children to select the essential components and actions for their chosen interventions  and to select appropriate indicators. The tool addresses the temporal phases of a woman’s reproductive cycle from the household level to secondary care in facilities: Pre-Conception/ Inter-Conception; Antenatal; Labor and Delivery; Postpartum Care; and Newborn Care.

• Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS)
  Child Survival grantees are required to use the Rapid CATCH tool, which establishes a set of standard indicators to collect baseline and end of project data. This data is used to demonstrate the important contributions of the child survival portfolio to increase coverage and improve practices. In 2006, indicators for Rapid CATCH become more complex. This, along with the emergence of integrated programs that address the needs of multiple target populations created sampling challenges for grantees. The CORE Group M&E Working Group created this guidance document to clearly outline the recommended protocol for parallel sampling using LQAS to collect Rapid CATCH information. The Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) guide is for managers, field supervisors, and others who plan, monitor, and evaluate community health programs. The guide will aid them to train others in a simple and rapid method for collecting data. The guide consists of two sections: (1) a guide for trainers; and (2) a participants manual and workbook.

• Lot Quality Assurance – Protocol for Parallel Sampling (2008)
  CORE Group's Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group developed several guidance documents to help program managers implement a Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) parallel sampling methodology. The methodology enables the efficient collection of information from different sampling groups in the same area at the same time with an adequate sample size for each indicator.
• Lot Quality Assurance Sampling Guidance: FAQs (2008)
  The Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) FAQ document was produced by the CORE Group Monitoring & Evaluation working group as a result of a TAG meeting held in August 2008, in which practitioners developed new guidelines for parallel sampling in order to improve the quality of monitoring and evaluation efforts.
• Training in Qualitative Research Methods: Training Curriculum for Building the Capacity of PVO, NGO and MOH Partners (2005)
  This training is designed to help PVOs improve the quality of their qualitative research in order to make more informed programming decisions for their child survival projects.
• Partnership-Defined Quality Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit (2010)
  This set of handy reference tools is meant to assist PDQ practitioners with resources, such as sample exit interviews and checklists to complement Save the Children’s Partnership Defined Quality Manual and Partnership Defined Quality Facilitator’s Guide. The Toolkit also includes a Youth Annex for specific youth-focused PDQ projects, to complement the PDQ for Youth Manual. One unique element of the document is that tested indicators for community capacity are linked with questions in the tools so that practitioners can measure how their intervention increased community capacity, thus helping to measure sustainability.
• Knowledge, Practice, Coverage (KPC) Survey Training Curriculum (2004)
  CORE Group’s KPC Curriculum consists of a set of trainers guides and participant handouts and resources to train trainers and field workers to carry out a KPC survey.  Based on extensive field testing in several countries, the complete set includes three separate instructional manuals.   1) KPC Training of Survey Trainers:  Trainer’s Guide and Participant’s Manual and Workbook with training development exercises, dialogue education warm-ups, and background information on organizing a 5 day KPC workshop.  2) KPC Survey Training: Trainer’s Guide which provides detailed instructions on administering a survey,  selecting a sample selection, developing a survey instrument, training supervisors and interviewers, maintaining quality, analyzing results, and using the results for program planning.  3) KPC Survey Training:  Participant’s Manuals and Workbooks includes a full set of handouts (including those for use as slides or overheads) for core team members, supervisor and interviewer use, and for post-survey team analysis.

Collaboration Materials

• NGO Malaria Secretariats: Foundations for Advocacy and Impact (2009)
  This paper presents CORE Group’s experience and lessons learned in supporting and helping to grow country-level NGO networks to serve as a model for other countries and programs interested in organizing similar efforts. This case study focuses on a network model in Kenya, where CORE Group worked with Kenya NGOs Alliance Against Malaria (KeNAAM) to implement a locally appropriate civil society partnership for engaging with the private sector, government, and other partners in the fight against malaria.

• A Partnership Model for Public Health: Five Variables for Productive Collaboration (2004)
  This paper presents a framework for assessing strategic partnering as a way to reach populations that have been traditionally bypassed by maternal and child health (MCH) interventions. The framework is applied to the Child Survival Collaborations and Resources (CORE) Group. Concrete examples are given of how this partnership contributes to improved outcomes for mothers and children; enhanced policy dialogue, expanded local and national capacity; and the generation of new resources. This paper concludes with the identification of relevant lessons for MCH donors and NGOs that might with to enter into similar partnership arrangements.
• A Wealth of Opportunity: Partnering with CORE and CORE Group Members (2002)
  CORE Group members are valuable partners for other actors in the maternal and child health arena. In addition to their strong desire for collaborative work and their long-standing ties to communities, CORE members bring high-level technical skills and critical resources to their work. CORE Group members routinely engage in rigorous testing of new methodologies while sharing what they have learned with colleague institutions and relevant policy-makers. When CORE Group members partner with national ministries of health and district level health offices, they often serve as a bridge between the mother undergoing a risk-laden pregnancy and the government functionary drafting new national health sector policies. By drawing on the distinctive strengths of CORE PVOs, donors and other development actors maximize their returns on the investments they make in primary health care programs geared toward vulnerable women and children in developing and transitional societies.