OVERVIEW

The Sustaining Health Outcomes through the Private Sector (SHOPS) Plus Afghanistan is a five-year project to strengthen the impact and sustainability of the Afghan Social Marketing Organization (ASMO). ASMO is a local social marketing organization established with support from USAID to promote family planning (FP), diarrhea prevention and management, as well as nutrition via the national distribution of water purification tablets, oral rehydration salts and other diarrhea therapies, and family planning and other products at affordable prices. SHOPS Plus increases demand for such products through social and behavior change communications (SBCC) campaigns.

ACTIVITIES

• To increase geographic availability and distribution methods of current and new ASMO products
• To launch new priority health products
• To increase consumers' knowledge and demand for ASMO products and services
• To improve health and other service providers' knowledge and skills
• To increase revenue from, and cost efficiency of, ASMO products
• To strengthen ASMO's technical capacity
• To strengthen ASMO's institutional capacity
• To strengthen ASMO's financial sustainability

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Distributed ASMO health products through 2,554 traditional and non-traditional outlets nationwide, and generated 279,174 couple years of protection (CYP) through contraceptive products (condoms, pills, and injectables) sales to urban and rural areas January – September 2018
• Completed an assessment of ASMO's internal governance and controls systems to identify key organizational systems that needed strengthening for ASMO to be eligible for direct donor awards
• Established policy and procedures for routine monitoring of product cost recovery; recommended changes to ASMO's chart of accounts to capture types of expenses incurred in social marketing
• Developed a five-year strategic plan for ASMO that creates a roadmap for sustainability and identifies milestones for measuring progress
• Selected 200 beauty salons for testing a new approach to increase women's access to family planning and maternal and child health information; salons were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups for evaluation purposes
• Doubled ASMO's suite of products by introducing five new products: two variants of Aquatabs (household water purification tablets), zinc sulphate dispersible tablets and a brand of prepackaged combination therapy consisting of oral rehydration salts (ORS) and zinc (both for pediatric diarrhea), and Iron Folic Acid (IFA) tablets in a new cost-effective blister pack
• Launched two mobile software applications to improve efficiency and effectiveness of ASMO's sales operations: one designed for ASMO's sales persons to use for planning and reporting, and the other designed for retailers and wholesalers to place orders for resupply.