How a Gender-sensitive Quality Improvement Approach Supports Integrated People-centered Health Services
Clients, family and friends, communities, and health providers are all influenced by the culture they live in and by that culture’s perspectives on gender. To ignore gender is to ignore a vital part of the people and their local context that the WHO framework aims to center. Gender must be considered in order to have truly people-centered health services. A gender-sensitive approach takes the different needs, constraints, and opportunities of women, men, girls, and boys into account and responds to them strategically in program design, implementation, and evaluation. By considering and responding to these differences, health services are more people-centered. The USAID ASSIST Project’s gender-sensitive approach facilitates analyzing the social and cultural influences that determine who has access to care, who remains in care, and who receives quality care, to be able to respond appropriately.