Primary Impact

The Role of Primary Health Care

Primary health care can provide 90 percent of health services a person will need throughout their life and is an important foundation for USAID’s Global Health investments. Primary health care promotes health awareness through disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Most of the reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health services, along with key communicable and noncommunicable disease interventions, are delivered as components of primary health care. It advances USAID’s mission to reduce inequities in life expectancy by increasing access to essential health services and bolstering national security against infectious disease threats.

Primary Impact

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Primary Impact: USAID’s Primary Health Care Learning Model

Primary Impact is USAID’s effort to accelerate progress in health and survival globally through primary health care. In 2022, Primary Impact launched in an initial seven focus countries across Africa and Asia: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and the Philippines. In 2024, it expanded to India, Rwanda, Uganda, and Vietnam.

Since the launch of Primary Impact, these eleven countries have worked hand-in-hand with USAID to develop Action Plans to drive improvements and results in their primary health care delivery. These plans include supporting the inclusion of a diverse array of local health actors including health workers and civil society, measuring and learning to ensure activities reflect best practices for delivering effective primary health care, and expanding coordination with other global development partners.

Primary Impact builds more intentional linkages across USAID’s current global health programs and initiatives to further strengthen primary health care in the twelve focus countries. By leveraging USAID’s global health programs, we will have greater alignment and continuity of whole-person care across lifespans. This better equips country health systems to respond to health emergencies and address their population’s lifetime health needs.

Supporting Our Health Workforce

A robust, well-supported, and equitably distributed global health workforce is essential for delivering primary health care services. USAID’s primary health care approach enables a comprehensive focus on the multidisciplinary health workforce required to deliver quality primary health care services. In Primary Impact focus countries, strategic health workforce investments and coordination to deliver primary health care services will be highly encouraged and serve as a model for other countries on the implementation of the Global Health Worker Initiative.