Operationalizing herd health through community engagement and gender integration

This training module provides a practice-oriented framework for strengthening herd health in pastoralist and agro-pastoralist systems through community-driven, gender-responsive, and participatory extension approaches. It recognizes herd health not merely as a technical animal health issue, but as a cornerstone of livelihoods, food security, and gender equity. Grounded in Ethiopia’s Animal Health Extension Guidelines (2025), the module equips trainers, extension agents, and Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) with the knowledge, skills, and facilitation tools required to shift from top-down service delivery to community ownership of herd health practices. The module emphasizes that sustainable herd health improvements depend on meaningful community engagement and gender integration. Women, men, and youth play distinct but complementary roles in livestock management. By applying gender analysis and inclusive facilitation methods, the module ensures that herd health interventions reflect lived realities, enhance participation, and improve outcomes. A central strength of the module is its focus on participatory learning and behavior change. It introduces and operationalizes proven participatory approaches such as Farmer/Pastoralist Field School (F/PFS) and the Pioneer-Positive Deviance (P-PD) approach. These approaches reposition livestock keepers as co-experts and innovators, while extension agents act as facilitators of learning, reflection, and collective action.
To support sustained adoption of improved practices, the module applies the COM-B behavior change model, guiding trainers to address capability (knowledge and skills), opportunity (access, services, and social norms), and motivation (values, incentives, and lived benefits). The module emphasizes sustainable herd health community ownership of herd health practices and gender integration community engagement and participation, and outcomes.