Exploring the Roads to Community and Family Health through Community Advocacy, Education, Empowerment, Healthcare, Mobilization, Research, and Training



Community


We work with community members to assess, plan, and target areas of priority with emphases on using low cost local resources. We also enlist the services of stakeholders who are either directly (e.g., those who were born, originate, or have family members from the respective communities) or indirectly (with interest to provide help) related to the specific communities. To develop a community-based program, it is most logical to work from within the community using gatekeepers. This is especially true of societies which are ladened with cultural and traditional practices such as those in Africa. In Liberia, for example, meeting and getting inputs from chiefs, elders, women organizations, youth organizations, and other general community members can be the major pathways to effecting meaningful change. We work with community members through direct partnership with emphases on making the community to own projects through planning, development, implementation, evaluation, and extension of services. The goal is to use community resources with limited external influences while still recognizing the need for inputs from other sources. Dr. Jallah Kennedy and a team of professionals and local residents visited the pilot sites to conduct need assessment using the Delphi method/technique (two heads are better than one, or...n heads are better than one) with community members including national, county, district, sectional, clan, and town/village stakeholders from March 29-April 18, 2015. We are in the process of working with the community members, based on the need assessment to: Do school health assessments by teachers and community health workers Do community surveillance to identify those with potential health problems (emphases on nutritional status, fever conditions, and diarrhea diseases controls) for referral to the local health facility Work with traditional midwives to increase participation in the care of pregnant women to reduce the high maternal mortality rate. Do communal farming to produce food (crops, fish, poultry....) for school feeding program to help reduce the malnutrition rates. The food will also be used to sell to assist with some basic health supplies for the local health facility Provide educational opportunities to local citizens to get post-secondary education/training for health workers, teachers, and agriculture professionals. Exploring the Roads to Community and Family Health through Community Advocacy, Education, Empowerment, Healthcare, Mobilization, Research, and Training Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed malesuada faucibus ex nec ultricies. Donec mattis egestas nisi non pretium. Suspendisse nec eros ut erat facilisis maximus. In congue et leo in varius. Vestibulum sit amet felis ornare, commodo orci ut, feugiat lorem.


Health


Our approach is to work with the existing health system through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and local non-governmental organizations to strengthen and augment ongoing services. We will be working directly with health facility staffs to develop community referrals (e.g., through community health volunteers and traditional midwives) and additional innovation programs to increase service utilization, training, health education, and collaborations. The health workers will be part of the core research activities. Do mobile health in concert with community health volunteers to improve vaccination coverage, school health assessment, deworming, anthropometric measurements (height, weight, arm/head circumference) for nutritional and growth/develoment assessment, vision and dental screening, and sex education to particularly reduce teenage pregnancies. Partner with regulatory bodies, pharmaceutical institutions, and research institutions to provide commonly used products for first aid services (e.g., specialized oral rehydration solutions, and fever medications) that can be kept at homes.


Research


Use data from the community and health programs to develop evidence- based....programs Database development for health informatics programs to increase timely reporting, interpretation, and understanding of trend data. Community-based participatory research approaches Prevalence and cross-sectional studies to measure disease burden We will begin a longitudinal maternal child health study to follow pregnant women until children are one year old in November/December 2015.






CURRENT ACTIVITIES



Community health care workers outreach in towns and villages to render primary health care Training of nursing school faculty, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers/auxiliaries Maternal waiting home Sustainable farming – fish pond, poultry, and crops Creating database to improve health information aggregation, storage, decision- making, and sharing. Development of a 5-year longitudinal maternal and child health research.

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Average Cost of Some of Our Current and Pending Activities 1. Village and community health workers ($50.00 for an entire month can provide outreach to 1000- 5000 people by one of these volunteers) 2. Caring for pregnant women and children ($43.00 can provide THREE MEALS for 20 pregnant women for ONE DAY in a maternal waiting home. The pregnant women leave their villages/towns when they are about 8 ½ months pregnant to stay near the clinic until they deliver the baby – this reduces maternal complication and deaths especially for high risk mothers and those living far away). 3. Outreach and vaccinations for villagers who cannot reach the local clinics due to, at times very far distances ($8.00 can provide gasoline for motorbike for a day for the vaccinator and midwife/another health worker to do outreach). 4. Assist villages/towns and schools to develop local agricultural programs to reduce malnutrition and increase food security ($10.25 a day can incentivize 10 community members to work on a communal garden/farm). 5. Water and sanitation programs to reduce malaria and diarrhea diseases (investing $1.00 in providing good sanitation services can yield $4-12 return of health and productivity benefits based on UN data).