Strategic Plan

Building a Stronger Future for Child Healthcare in Africa

ICHA’s strategy is built around a simple goal: improving the survival, health, and wellbeing of newborns, children, and families while strengthening the healthcare systems that serve them. Our approach combines three interconnected priorities—Care, Capacity, and Catalyst— designed to create impact that extends far beyond the patients we serve directly.

1. CARE — Providing Excellent Clinical Services

ICHA provides direct healthcare services primarily in Arusha and Northern Tanzania, focusing on newborns, children, mothers, and families. Our services include community outreach, pediatric outpatient care, specialized maternal and pediatric services, diagnostics, prevention, and emergency care.

The Arusha Pediatric & Maternal Care Centre (APMC) provides an important foundation for this work. ICHA’s strategy calls for continued expansion of specialized outpatient and diagnostic services, with a goal of reaching at least 8,000 patient visits annually by 2029 and establishing APMC as a leading specialized outpatient and diagnostic centre in Northern Tanzania by 2030.

ICHA also envisions a future Mother & Child Medical Centre of Excellence providing comprehensive maternal, neonatal, pediatric, and emergency services.

2. CAPACITY — Equipping Healthcare Professionals

Excellent care cannot be sustained without skilled healthcare professionals.

ICHA transforms practical clinical experience into education, mentorship, leadership development, and resources that healthcare professionals can apply in their own hospitals. The model is a continuous cycle of doing, learning, refining, teaching, and multiplying knowledge.

Through Tiny Feet Big Steps neonatology conferences, bedside mentorship, the Every Breath Counts neonatal manual, community education, curriculum development, and a future Centre of Excellence, ICHA aims to strengthen healthcare capacity across Tanzania and sub-Saharan Africa.

By 2031, the strategy calls for practical teaching and mentorship in at least 20 partner hospitals across East Africa, while the future regional learning and simulation institute is envisioned to train at least 250 interdisciplinary healthcare professionals annually.

3. CATALYST — Turning Knowledge into Action

ICHA’s impact extends beyond clinical care and education through research, innovation, data, quality improvement, collaboration, and advocacy.

The Catalyst priority is designed to generate evidence, strengthen healthcare data systems, develop context-appropriate solutions, and share what works with healthcare professionals and institutions across Africa.

This includes research partnerships, clinical research, quality improvement, surveillance, evidence-based protocols, and collaboration with hospitals, universities, ministries of health, and other institutions. The goal is to ensure that knowledge generated through clinical practice can lead to measurable improvements in healthcare systems and outcomes.

The Long-Term Vision: A Medical Centre of Excellence

These three priorities ultimately converge around a shared need: a stable clinical environment where excellent care, education, research, and innovation can develop together. ICHA’s philosophy is simple: We teach what we do, and we do what we teach.

Clinical excellence generates practical knowledge. Practical knowledge becomes education. Education multiplies impact. Research and innovation strengthen clinical care. Together, they form a continuous cycle of learning and improvement.

The long-term vision is therefore not simply a neonatal unit, but a comprehensive Mother & Child Hospital serving as a Centre of Excellence—providing outstanding care for families in Northern Tanzania while creating an authentic learning and research environment for healthcare professionals from across sub-Saharan Africa.

This Centre of Excellence will be developed thoughtfully and in phases, building upon existing services such as APMC. The strategy establishes the destination while allowing the size, scope, partnerships, facilities, and investment required to evolve according to demonstrated needs and available resources.

An Opportunity for Partnership

For donors and grant partners, ICHA’s strategy represents an opportunity to invest not in a single program, but in an integrated model for sustainable healthcare improvement.

A contribution can help provide care to a child today, equip a healthcare professional for tomorrow, strengthen a hospital’s capacity, generate evidence for better practice, or support the systems required to multiply those benefits across communities and countries.

The vision is ambitious—but the pathway is practical: Care. Capacity. Catalyst.

Together, these priorities create a model in which every patient cared for, every clinician trained, every innovation tested, and every partnership formed can contribute to better healthcare for children far beyond those ICHA serves directly.

We are building more than services. We are building the capacity, knowledge, partnerships, and clinical excellence needed to help children across Africa thrive.