Resource

Report

Garment Sector Health Interventions in Cambodia: A Comprehensive Review

As part of the WorkerHealth project, the Evidence Project/Population Council conducted a comprehensive review of garment sector health interventions, particularly RH- and FP-focused projects, in Cambodia during the last five years. The results from the review support WorkerHealth’s objective of enabling evidence-based decisionmaking and programming related to the health and wellbeing of female garment factory workers in Cambodia, by documenting the range of garment sector health interventions and identifying best practices and gaps in programming and evaluation.

Key findings from the study included:

  • RH and FP health service needs are paramount for the economically important, female-dominated garment sector, but most interventions do not specifically or adequately address these issues.
  • Joint partnership projects – both in terms of leadership and finance – hold untapped potential for maximizing expertise and resources. Collaboration between government, implementers, and donors would enable future projects to increase coverage, adopt more integrated, complementary intervention approaches, and reduce the burden on factory management.
  • Policy advocacy and innovative health financing strategies are under-utilized approaches: future projects should engage with the government through policy advocacy, especially the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoLVT). Projects can also actively support the government’s work to improve worker health, including for example by developing health financing strategies that complement the National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
  • There is an acute need for rigorous monitoring and evaluation of project outcomes and implementation processes, to determine what works and does not work and to inform future GF-based health intervention design.