Scaling Dedicated Supervision: Progress and Learnings

In 2023, the Ivorian government launched an ambitious new national community health strategy, supported by technical assistance from Muso experts embedded within the Department of Community Health (DSC). The strategy aims to transform the existing volunteer-based system into a professionalized national workforce of over 10,000 professional Community Health Workers (proCHWs).

A Professional Community Health Worker with his supervisor in Adzopé - Côte D'Ivoire

This major policy shift followed several years of advocacy and technical support led by Muso’s Technical Assistance team, who contributed to drafting the strategic plan and helped develop the costing framework with guidance from Muso’s Healthcare Financing Specialist. Our specialists also played a key role in designing and revising training manuals focused on dedicated supervision for frontline health workers, directly supporting the rollout of the strategy’s first phase. 

As part of the initial rollout, the government began implementing the dedicated supervision model in six districts in Q2 2024, initiating a phased national scale-up. Building on this momentum, the DSC led the expansion of the dedicated supervision strategy across 14 pilot districts in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025, as part of a broader effort to strengthen the reach and quality of community health care.  

Throughout Q1, to assess implementation progress, joint supervision missions were conducted across all 14 districts by Muso and the DSC. Muso was represented by: Seydou Traoré, Government Partnership Manager, Olivier Gnissan, Learning and Innovation Lead, Abraham Dosso, Monitoring & Evaluation Data Analyst, and Rosine Touré, Community-Based Interventions Lead. 

These visits highlighted strong engagement from local health actors, effective use of the Community Health Toolkit (CHT) digital application, and successful integration of both digital and physical tools. However, several challenges remain—particularly in ensuring consistency of supervision and optimizing the functionality of the CHT platform. 

Looking ahead to Q2, Muso and our Ivorian government partners will reconvene to evaluate progress, address ongoing challenges, and define actionable next steps to further strengthen the implementation of the national strategy. Over the next two years, the initiative aims to deploy dedicated supervisors to support more than 8,200 proCHWs serving over 6.3 million people across 53 districts. 

Our team looks forward to continuing this journey with our partners, as we work together to lay the foundation for a more resilient, effective, and equitable community health system in Côte d’Ivoire.