Ms. Moyo is an associate program director in the Market Shaping practice at Results for Development (R4D), where she provides strategic and technical leadership across R4D’s Tanzania market shaping portfolio. She manages the in-country team, guides the analytical and technical work underpinning R4D’s government-, donor- and partner-facing products, and represents R4D externally as the organization works to expand access to essential health and nutrition products.

Throughout her career, Ms. Moyo has contributed to initiatives that have strengthened health systems and improved access to quality, people-centered health services in Tanzania. At Ifakara Health Institute, she contributed to the Staha initiative in Tanga, which brought communities and health care workers together to address disrespect and abuse during childbirth. The intervention was associated with a 66% reduction in the odds of women experiencing disrespect and abuse. She also contributed to research published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization that helped advance the research, policy and rights agenda around disrespect and abuse during childbirth and its effects on women’s confidence in health facilities and willingness to return for care.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Moyo was head of health and nutrition at Plan International Tanzania, where she led strategic funding identification, program design and integrated delivery across sexual and reproductive health, WASH, nutrition, maternal and child health, and noncommunicable diseases. She also represented the organization in national and international policy forums, including Tanzania’s family planning and RMNCAH+N technical working groups.

Previously, Ms. Moyo served as head of projects at Marie Stopes International, overseeing multi-donor programs focused on adolescent sexual and reproductive health, comprehensive post-abortion care and public systems strengthening. Through these programs, she helped strengthen systems to sustain and scale approaches with minimal program support and beyond the programs’ lifespans.

Ms. Moyo holds a master’s degree in health care leadership from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and a bachelor’s degree in political science and public administration from the University of Dar es Salaam. She speaks English and Swahili.

Publications

• Disrespectful and abusive treatment during facility delivery in Tanzania: a facility and community survey
• Community and health system intervention to reduce disrespect and abuse during childbirth in Tanga Region, Tanzania
• Hidden in plain sight: Validating theory on how health systems enable the persistence of women’s mistreatment in childbirth through a case in Tanzania
• The Staha Project: Promoting Respectful and Attentive Care in Tanzania — Presented by Wema Moyo

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The study identifies key challenges to expanding first 1,000 days services and offers concrete recommendations for national and provincial health departments seeking to build a CHW workforce capable of delivering comprehensive early childhood services at scale.

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Alethea is a senior program manager at Results for Development, where she leads monitoring, evaluation and learning within the Innovation team. She is also a specialist in gender equity, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI), and helps ensure a comprehensive inclusion lens throughout the Innovation team’s work. Collectively, she works to ensure that innovative approaches bring about equitable impact and are measured and learned from in ways that benefit the change agents involved and the wider ecosystems.

She has worked as a researcher, grant manager and technical expert on public health and gender equality, often with a focus on sexual and reproductive health. She has been a thought leader on menstrual health and has provided expert advice to multiple stakeholders — including UNFPA, ActionAid Malawi, Plan International, AmplifyChange and the Aga Khan Foundation — shaping policy and generating direct impact. For example, she recently guided the Aga Khan Foundation in Uganda to pilot and scale a first-of-its-kind menstrual cup project that produced tangible quantitative uptake results as well as rich qualitative insights. Throughout her work, Alethea has focused on bridging the gap between research and implementation, emphasizing how to capture actionable insights that drive tangible changes responding directly to localized problems.

Before joining R4D, she worked as an independent consultant, providing technical advice on monitoring, evaluation and learning to multiple INGOs and international development actors, including UK Aid Match. From 2020 to 2024, she was a senior technical expert in gender and social inclusion at MannionDaniels, serving on the senior management team. Her responsibilities included working directly with donors such as FCDO, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNFPA and cross-donor partnerships such as the Global Evidence in Education Advisory Panel to ensure quality results and impact measurement within education, health and climate programming.

Alethea holds a master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a master’s degree in Middle East studies from the University of Oxford, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Exeter.

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Before joining R4D, Dr. Balsara served as director of health, population and nutrition at USAID/Ghana, where she oversaw a $90 million annual portfolio and designed the Mission’s five-year, $450 million public health strategy. Previously, she held senior leadership roles with USAID in Nigeria, Indonesia and Tanzania, and worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she managed flagship global health financing partnerships in collaboration with the World Bank, the Global Financing Facility, the Islamic Development Bank and the Lives and Livelihoods Fund.

Dr. Balsara’s work sits at the intersection of health financing, supply chains and service delivery design, with deep expertise in primary health care, prevention and health promotion, and community health. She is recognized for building coalitions across governments, donors and the private sector to expand sustainable access to essential medicines and health products and to strengthen health systems.

She holds a Ph.D. in international health and health systems and speaks English, Hindi and Bahasa Indonesia.

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In 2017, Guinea launched its National Community Health Policy (NCHP) to align with broader decentralization efforts, delegating 14 key responsibilities to communes. By mid-2022, around 75% of communes had begun implementing the policy, with varying degrees of integration depending on local planning and external support. Previous evaluations revealed that many local actors struggled to understand or fulfill their assigned roles under the policy, exposing a gap between what the policy intends and what is practiced. To explore this discrepancy, the study employs the decision space framework to analyze the implementation of the NCHP in Guinea between 2017 and 2021.

The paper is part of the USAID-funded, Results for Development-led Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator in collaboration with the Centre National de Formation et de Recherche en Santé Rurale, the African Center for Excellence at the Gamal Abdel Nasser University, the Guinean Ministry of Public Health and Hygiene, as well as the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

To read the full article, click here.

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The program advanced equity, quality, and resource optimization by:

• Supporting local leaders to apply a systems lens to complex health systems issues
• Connecting local innovation and global knowledge
• Strengthening local ownership and system improvement processes
• Building countries’ ability to drive lasting health system improvements

The Accelerator was responsive to local priorities and worked on various health systems issues, from improving health financing and strengthening community health to integrating rehabilitation, mental health, and psychosocial support services into primary health care, among other complex challenges.

The Accelerator’s core consortium of R4D, ICF, and the Health Strategy and Delivery Foundation (HSDF) was supported by several other global, regional, and local partners, including CERRHUD (Benin), Curatio International Foundation (Georgia), Global Challenges Corporation and RIP+ (Côte d’Ivoire), Comité Jeunes Mon Avenir d’Abord (My Future First Youth Committee, or CJMAD) (Guinea), and the Liberia Association for Psychosocial Services (LAPS) and Phebe Hospital (Liberia) among others, and a network of local experts.

The post Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator – Final Report appeared first on Results for Development.

This 90-minute webinar was organized by the Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator (a global initiative led by R4D and funded by USAID with co-funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations), the Community Health Impact Coalition, and D-Tree, and contributes to advancing knowledge around USAID’s Health Systems Strengthening Learning Agenda as part of the 2024 Health Systems Strengthening Learning Series.

Recording of the webinar: Main recording (video, speakers, slides, main audio channel)

• Audio from English channel
• Audio from French channel
• Audio from Swahili channel

Related Resources:

• Presentation Slides: Institutionalizing Community Health as part of National Health Systems in Africa: Approaches and Lessons to Forge a Sustainable Path
• Webinar Chat Resource Links

Session Overview/Objectives: 

To share valuable insights, identify common challenges, and showcase tangible successes and practical solutions in the institutionalization and financing of community health programs. This webinar aims to foster a deeper understanding among stakeholders of the path forward in enhancing the resilience and effectiveness of community health systems. Specifically:

1. To offer a global perspective on the progress made at the country level concerning the development and implementation of community health policies. 
2. To illustrate successful examples of efforts led by a range of stakeholders, including civil society, the community health workforce, and Ministries of Health, in institutionalizing and sustaining community health programs. Drawing on insights from two country case studies, the webinar will delve into the intricacies of planning for program sustainability, emphasizing aspects such as domestic resource mobilization and financing.
3. To explore the mechanisms that facilitate active stakeholder participation, particularly through effective collaboration between civil society and Ministries of Health, to advocate for policy change and drive effective community health strategies.

Speakers:

• Opening Framing Remarks: Nazo Kureshy, Office of Health Systems, USAID
• Dr. Lennie Kyomuhangi Bazira, Director of Policy, Community Health Impact Coalition
• Dr. Mamady Kourouma, Director, Department of Community Health and Traditional Medicine, Ministry of Health, Guinea
• Luc Innocent Touré, Program Coordinator, Comité Jeunes, Mon Avenir d’Abord, Guinea, Civil Society Representative
• Lubayana Abdurahman Mwarab, Community Health Worker, Zanzibar
• Dr. Salim N. Slim, Director Preventive Services and Health Education, Ministry of Health, Zanzibar
• Moderator: Lior Miller, Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator/Results for Development

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