Family Planning

mPossible! Health Workers Can Get Training Anytime, Anywhere with Interactive Voice Response

Sarah Dwyer — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 13:11:51 +0000

This post originally appeared on the K4Health blog.

Advances in mobile health—or mHealth—have expanded the realm of possibility for remote education, diagnostic and treatment support, communication and training, disease tracking, monitoring, and data collection. Every day, mHealth grows to include more sophisticated applications for high-tech smartphones and tablets. But what about health workers—specifically those in rural areas who don’t have access to the latest technology?

To learn more about mLearning (or mobile learning) for health workers, IntraHealth International, through the CapacityPlus project, piloted an innovative program to provide refresher training to family planning service providers in Senegal using interactive voice response (IVR) technologies on basic mobile phones.

Author's name:

Amanda Puckett

Publication Date:

September 2014

Better, Stronger, and Thankful: HIV Peer Counselor in the Dominican Republic Shares Impact of His Work

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 16 Sep 2014 19:18:25 +0000

Alfredo Felix is a peer counselor with the Department of HIV at Jaime Mota Regional Hospital in Barahona, Dominican Republic. “I’ve always felt motivated to work in the community to inform people,” he says. The area shares a border with Haiti and has a large immigrant population at risk for HIV.

Peer counselors like Alfredo play an important role in countering the effects of stigma, which can make it hard for people to seek information about HIV and follow through with treatment. Alfredo tells a story about someone he helped:

Author's name:

Alex Collins and Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

September 2014

Connected Health Workers Key to Improved Health Care

Carol Bales — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 14:24:29 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Pape Gaye, president and CEO of IntraHealth International, writes from Recife, Brazil, to friends in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a letter published in Addis Fortune. Take a look:

While Addis Ababa gears itself up for the third International Conference on Family Planning, I find myself on the other side of the world, nearly 8400 kilometers away, in Recife, Brazil.

As reproductive health policy-makers, advocates, and practitioners are gathering at the African Union in Ethiopia, some of us, who would like to clone ourselves to be there with you—and feel like we are there in spirit—are gathered in Brazil for the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health.

Author's name:

Pape Gaye

Publication Date:

November 2013

Health Workers: Key to Family Planning and Reproductive Health

Carol Bales — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:45:41 +0000

“To talk about sexual and reproductive health, and not to talk about human resources for health—then the equation is not complete,” says Patrick Mugirwa, a program officer with Partners in Population and Development (PPD) Africa Regional Office. “So for PPD to have meaningful advocacy for sexual and reproductive health, of necessity human resources for health must be one of the major components we must advocate for.”

A CapacityPlus associate partner, PPD is an intergovernmental alliance that promotes South-South cooperation toward attainment of the global population and reproductive health agenda for sustainable development.

Author's name:

Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

October 2013

On the Rocky Road to Universal Health Coverage

Carol Bales — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:07:15 +0000

This post originally appeared on the Global Health Council blog.

If you look at the regions of the world that have made the greatest progress in family planning—India and Bangladesh come to mind—you will see that all of their strategies have included strong community health workforces. That’s because the role of the health worker is crucial.

We in the field of global health know that we have unfinished business when it comes to family planning. Globally, the use of modern contraception rose sluggishly between 1990 and 2012, from 54% to 57% over 22 years. Today 800 women will die due to causes related to pregnancy or childbirth, partly because they do not yet have access to or freedom to use the family planning methods they want and need. The number of children under five who will die is much higher—29,000 every day, mostly due to preventable causes.

Author's name:

Pape Gaye

Publication Date:

September 2013

The Other 16 and Pregnant

Carol Bales — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 19:39:19 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Currently, almost half of the world’s population is under the age of 25. That represents three billion adolescents who have their full lives ahead of them. A strong education and economic opportunities can help adolescents plan productive and fulfilling futures, but without access to reproductive health services, their plans could be interrupted by unintended pregnancy. Unfortunately, many adolescents currently live in places that restrict access to these services for young people.

And in some cases, these adolescents are married. Some communities view early marriage as a protective factor for a young woman’s sexual health and safety; however, early marriage is a risk factor for many health and social issues. Often married to older men, these young women typically have little to no negotiating power in their relationships, resulting in unsafe sex and adolescent pregnancies.

Author's name:

Katelyn Bryant-Comstock

Publication Date:

July 2013

Picturing Our Work: Harnessing mLearning for Training Health Workers

Carol Bales — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:20:14 +0000

In this age of rapidly emerging technologies, how can we improve the way we provide training to health workers?

This is the question CapacityPlus is trying to answer with our mLearning work in Senegal. Using feedback from previous eLearning projects—such as problems with Internet connectivity and computer access—the project started looking into mLearning options that use audio to deliver training through the most basic mobile phones. But there was no suitable option.

So CapacityPlus developed its own interactive voice response (IVR) mLearning platform that delivers training to health workers on their mobile phones, meaning that health workers can remain at their posts and continue providing care in their communities.

Author's name:

Devika Chawla

Publication Date:

April 2013

US Investments in Foreign Aid Provide a Healthy Return

Carol Bales — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:45:38 +0000

This post was originally published on USAID's IMPACT blog.

What if you could take a fraction of a penny and use it to help build a health system? Believe it. It takes only a fraction of a single penny per American taxpayer dollar to train a global health workforce—a workforce that will reach millions through treatment, prevention, and counseling services.

Just ask midwife Teddy Tiberimbwaku, who had the opportunity to meet Uganda’s vice president Thursday.

Last year, Uganda’s Ministry of Health, operating with only one doctor and 13 nurses to serve every 10,000 people, was told by the Ministry of Public Service that not only could it not create any new positions, but also any unfilled positions—some 42 percent of them—would be lost.

Author's name:

Dr. Ariel Pablos-Méndez and Pape Gaye

Publication Date:

March 2013

Health Workers Can Help Stamp Out Poverty

Carol Bales — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:26:45 +0000

This piece was originally published on InterAction’s blog on 10/17/12.

They say wealthier is healthier, and there’s evidence to back that up.

While money alone can’t buy good health, the poor are significantly more likely to experience poor health. But like many of poverty’s symptoms, poor health can also cause poverty.

A severe illness can obliterate a family’s financial health, whether from the cost of treatment or a loss of livelihood. You may know someone who lost a job, a home, or financial security after receiving treatment for a devastating diagnosis.

Author's name:

Corinne Farrell

Publication Date:

October 2012

Family Planning and Access to Health Workers

Carol Bales — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:44:47 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Amid the worldwide health worker shortage, some low-income countries are managing to show impressive levels of modern contraceptive use. How does access to skilled health workers affect family planning use, and what are some countries doing differently?

Fifty-seven countries have a critical shortage of health workers, and progress on the ground remains much slower than any of us would like to see—evidence from the Global Health Workforce Alliance suggests that only about half the national workforce plans are actually being implemented. Not one of these 57 health workforce “crisis” countries identified by the World Health Organization in 2006 has achieved the recommended minimum threshold of 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 people.

Author's name:

Maurice Middleberg

Publication Date:

November 2011

From Cairo to Dakar: Population Dynamics in Mali

Carol Bales — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:19:46 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Twenty years ago I arrived in Bamako, Mali, and discovered a capital city settling into relative calm following a military-led coup. My first images of Bamako were of cows, cars, and citizens grazing, grinding gears, and gridlocked on Bamako’s main artery through town—the Route de Koulikoro.

One did not have to travel far on this road to experience the full spectrum of Malian culture and economy. Brand-new, shiny Land Rovers shared the road with bush taxis, mopeds, bikes, an occasional chicken, and many, many pairs of shuffling feet.

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis

Publication Date:

November 2011

The Seven-Billionth Person: A Global Health Workforce Perspective

Carol Bales — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:59:06 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

On October 31st the world welcomed Danica in the Philippines, Nargis in India, and numerous other babies who symbolize the seven-billionth person on our planet. It’s a timely moment to shine some light on the implications of population growth for the health and well-being of all our children and the generations to come.

Here’s the crux: the global shortage of health workers translates to an estimated billion people with no access to essential health services, according to a 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) report. So exactly how many health workers do we need to address this problem? The WHO has determined that 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 people is the minimum threshold needed to cover the population with essential health services. This is commonly referred to as the health worker density ratio.

Now here’s where the issue of population growth comes in. Planning and policy efforts to improve the health worker density ratio have focused on increasing the ratio’s numerator (health workers). Makes sense, right? But they’ve largely ignored the ratio’s denominator (population size).

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis and Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

November 2011

The Key to Progress: Health Workforce Lessons from the Family Planning Movement

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 13:20:08 +0000

One of the great privileges of my life has been to know bold leaders in family planning and reproductive health. As I listen to the current debates about “task shifting” and “task sharing,” I am reminded of the pioneering work of Mechai Viravaidya and Allan Rosenfield in Thailand dating back to the 1960s. Along with Chitt Hemachudha, they introduced innovative approaches to family planning that can inform our current efforts to improve the health of women and their families.

The situation in Thailand at that time was similar to that faced today by many countries with a health workforce crisis. The number of doctors was quite low and they were very inequitably distributed; this meant that in large swaths of the country the doctor-patient ratio was on the order of one doctor per hundred thousand people. The Thai government had become committed to reducing the rate of population growth and improving maternal and child health. This led to the obvious conclusion that a diverse set of providers would be needed to make family planning widely available.

Author's name:

Maurice I. Middleberg

Publication Date:

July 2011

Community Health Workers: Meeting the Unmet Need for Family Planning in West and Central Africa

jennifer — Tue, 31 May 2011 13:44:43 +0000

A recent New York Times article featured an updated United Nations forecast that projects the world’s population will reach 10.1 billion by the end of the century, rather than stabilizing at nine billion midcentury as previously predicted. In part, these high rates of population growth are fueled by lower than expected declines in fertility in some of the poorer regions of the world—with the slowest fertility declines observed in West and Central Africa.

Behind the data
Demographers and other global health professionals argue that these sustained high rates of fertility and population growth are the result of a weakened commitment to family planning (FP) programs in the last two decades following a significant focus on FP during the 1970s and 1980s.

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis and Amanda Puckett

Publication Date:

May 2011

Model Families to Model Country: Community Workers Help Scale Up Ethiopia’s Health Program

jennifer — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:55:20 +0000

In a typical farmhouse scenario, families live in single-room homes—made of straw, wood, and mud—together with their cattle and other animals. They cook in the same room and do not have latrines or isolated waste disposal facilities. However, Ethiopia’s “model families”—a cornerstone of the country’s successful Health Extension Program (HEP)—build separate kitchens, arrange a place for their cattle outside the family tukul, and dig latrines.

Empowering families with healthy behaviors
Training model families is one of the HEP’s important strategies, and is adapted from Paul Lazarsfeld’s and Everett Rogers’ theories of mass communication and diffusion of innovation.

Author's name:

Mesrak Belatchew

Publication Date:

May 2011