Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Sep 15:14:423-435.
doi: 10.2147/HIV.S369429. eCollection 2022.

A Strategic Action Plan to Improve an Integrated Family Planning and HIV Service: Using Multiple Nominal Groups to Ensure Stakeholder Involvement

Affiliations

A Strategic Action Plan to Improve an Integrated Family Planning and HIV Service: Using Multiple Nominal Groups to Ensure Stakeholder Involvement

Dessie Ayalew Mekonnen et al. HIV AIDS (Auckl). .

Abstract

Introduction: The World Health Organization recommends that family planning be integrated in HIV services, to improve service offering and uptake; stakeholder involvement is crucial. The purpose of this manuscript is to share the utilization of nominal group technique (NGT) and multiple group analysis as a vehicle to ensure stakeholder involvement in the development of a strategic action plan to improve the implementation of integrated services in Ethiopia.

Methods: A qualitative research design, employing a NGT, was applied as data-gathering method to develop a strategic action plan for facilitating the integration of family planning and HIV services. NGT was used to ensure the equal involvement of stakeholders in the development thereof. Twenty-four programme managers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - experts in family planning and HIV/AIDS programmes, working in 10 sub-city health departments - participated in the nominal groups to identify the strategies to be included in an action plan development to facilitate integrated services.

Results: The first nominal group's participants identified 12 themes, derived from the 21 categories generated from 34 individual ideas. The second group identified nine themes, from 16 categories, generated from 30 individually ideas. A multiple group analysis utilizing the findings from both groups revealed the top five most important themes (leadership and management, capacity building, implementing policies and guidelines, advocacy/awareness and infrastructure) that were selected to be included in a strategic action plan to integrated family planning and HIV services in Ethiopia.

Discussion: The strategic action plan developed by the researcher who took into account the findings from the multiple group analysis was validated in a face-to-face validation meeting by all the relevant stakeholder's participation. Stakeholder involvement, utilizing different nominal groups and conducting multiple nominal group analysis ensured ownership of the strategic action plan as those involved in the development, will be the individuals to implement in Ethiopia.

Keywords: nominal group technique; stakeholder involvement; strategic action plan.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The process planning model.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overview of the strategic action plan development process.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Ford N, Newman M, Malumo S, Chitembo L, Gaffield ME. Integrating sexual and reproductive health services within HIV services: WHO guidance. Front Glob Women’s Health. 2021;2:735281. doi:10.3389/fgwh.2021.735281 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kanyangarara M, Sakyi K, Laar A. Availability of integrated family planning services in HIV care and support sites in sub-saharan Africa: a secondary analysis of national health facility surveys. Reprod Health. 2019;16(1):60. doi:10.1186/s12978-019-0713-x - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Mekonnen DA, Roets L. Integrating HIV and family planning services: the pros and cons. HIV/AIDS. 2020;12:879–886. doi:10.2147/HIV.S281997 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Nickols F. Strategy, Strategic Management, Strategic Planning and Strategic Thinking Howard. OH: Distance Consulting LLC; 2016.
    1. Holtgrave DR, Valdiserri RO, Kalichman SC, Del Rio C, Thompson M. Core elements of a national Covid-19 strategy: lessons learned from the US national HIV/aids strategy. AIDS Behav. 2020;24(12):3279–3282. doi:10.1007/s10461-020-03045-3 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources