Financing Healthier Lives: Empowering Women Through Integration of Microfinance and Health Education

This document focuses on the strategy of integrating microfinance services with health education. It highlights joint global efforts of the Microcredit Summit Campaign (MCS) and United Nation's Population Fund (UNFPA) to empower women using this strategy. UNFPA believes that it is critical to develop a strategy that provides women with a vehicle for economic self-reliance in order to improve their health and well-being. MCS recognizes that financial services, when integrated with health education, can enhance efforts in poverty alleviation as well as economic and social empowerment. UNFPA has partnered with MCS to increase MFI capacity to integrate health education into their operations.The study makes recommendations to development agencies, governments and donors in order to enhance their contribution towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. These include:

• Direct significant financial resources to MFIs that focus on health education;
• Support sustainable microfinance for the very poor as a primary strategy;
• Identify, collaborate with and support institutions that offer experience and competencies for the combination of health education with microfinance.