Gender & Social Inclusion

Women and men are impacted differently by neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and they can face disparate barriers that hinder their use of health services. Vulnerable groups -- including women, people with disabilities, ethnic or religious minorities, and transient populations -- face challenges in accessing health care.

USAID’s Act to End Neglected Tropical Diseases | East program recognizes that NTD control and elimination goals will only be met if all people, and particularly the most vulnerable, are reached by NTD-fighting efforts. We are therefore committed to integrating strategies for Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) into our programming. We use context-specific sensitization and learning techniques to help countries develop their own concrete ways to incorporate GESI into NTD activities. We also apply an innovative and results-oriented approach called iDARE that was developed and is led by our sub-partner WI-HER, LLC (Women Influencing Health and Rule of Law) to help countries ensure NTD-fighting efforts are gender-sensitive, socially-inclusive, and achieve improved results for all people.

Act| East is also committed to integrating GESI into monitoring, evaluation, and learning efforts. For example, we promote collection of gender-disaggregated data and use gender-sensitive approaches to measure gender equity and social inclusion in NTD programming. This information is then used for decision making and program adaptation, with successful approaches scaled up and institutionalized.