Public health is one of the first areas of work that concerned the dRPC since the late 1990s. Over the years we have worked in HIV/AIDS, providing one of the four consultants to develop the first HIV/AIDS Emergency Action Plan for Nigeria, the HEAP.

The dRPC has also worked in the areas of reproductive, maternal and neonatal health with a focus on child spacing and family planning; on routine immunization; nutrition and on strengthening the primary health care system through implementation of the National Primary Health Under One Roof Policy.

Our flagship achievements in the area of public health are that we won two Grand Challenges, under the Saving Lives at Birth (SLaB) funded by Grand Challenges Canada; we were also awarded to flagship grants by USAID/Nigeria to implement the Leadership Development for Reproductive Health Project for Traditional and Religious Leaders and for Political Office Holders.  

Our milestone achievement in the area of public health has been to develop effective strategies, programming approaches, and techniques to strengthen the capacity of indigenous CSOs to take leadership on research and advocacy for advancing public health issues.

Our flagship projects in advancing civil society organizations to advocate for evidence-based public health change have been the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health project implemented between 2014 to 2017 with funding from the Gates Foundation and the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health at Scale (PACFaH@Scale) project also implemented along a timeline of 2017 to 2022 with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gender, youth, capacity building, and evidence generation are cross-cutting themes in all dRPC’s health projects. Youth and women-led CSOs are especially engaged and capacity development for evidence generation is a key activity in all dRPC’s health interventions.