K4Health

Current news and personal insights from and for the global public health community

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April 02, 2012
mHealth: Pearls and the "Dirty Dozen"

Laura Raney
FHI 360 | Senior Technical Officer

I’ve been to many mHealth gatherings and presentations lately, including the sessions during the International Conference on Family Planning in Dakar and the mHealth Working Group meetings in Washington. Several messages keep coming up. In Dakar, they were from a gathering of approximately 25 mHealth colleagues, mainly practitioners. The "pearls" or short lessons learned from past and present experiences included:
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K4Health Highlights
March 27, 2012
K4Health Leaders to Teach Johns Hopkins Summer Institute Course

Piers Bocock
K4Health, JHU∙CCP | Project Director

As the Project Director for K4Health, one of USAID’s flagship Knowledge Management (KM) projects, I get asked a lot of questions. And perhaps more than any other is this: “What is Knowledge Management, anyway?” I also get this one a lot: “What does Knowledge Management have to do with Public Health?” If you think you want to get more than the elevator pitch about KM, or want to understand how improved access to, and sharing of, health information can save lives and improve health outcomes, I invite you to spend 3 days with me and K4Health’s Knowledge Management Director, Tara Sullivan, as we lead a Summer Institute Course at Johns Hopkins.

Tara and I will co-teach K4Health’s new “Knowledge Management for Public Health in Low and Middle Income Countries” course June 20-22, 2012. The course will introduce participants to the basics of KM, the intentional process of capturing, storing, organizing, and exchanging knowledge to better inform decision-making. It will then show how the application of KM theory, principles and methods can be applied to strengthen public health systems. We’ll do this through lectures, case studies, presentations, and discussions. We’re excited that the school has asked us to offer this course, and I think anyone with an interest in KM in practice or how public health information can save lives will enjoy this course.

Read more: Course information on the Summer Institute website.

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K4Health Highlights
March 26, 2012
"Knowledge is Power, Power is Knowledge": Witnessing the impact of K4Health as Swaziland's Nkamanzi Community Info Centre opens the door to HIV/AIDS knowledge

Elizabeth Tully
JHU∙CCP | Toolkit Manager

Recently, while in Swaziland to assist the Soka Uncobe Project in developing a toolkit containing project materials and essential information on male circumcision, I was fortunate enough to attend the Nkamanzi Community Info Centre launch. While I did not understand every piece of the program due to many speeches being given in the local language, SiSwati, I discerned that they were giving praises to the implementing partners, including Knowledge for Health (K4Health), SAfAIDS, and NERCHA. Hearing high-level officials speak about the very project I work on while sitting on a mountainside in Swaziland was quite special to me.

The event location was beautifully situated on one of the many mountains in Swaziland within the Nkamanzi community. The conference was well attended with community members, children, and government officials.

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K4Health Highlights
March 14, 2012
Change is Coming (Part 2)

Simone Parrish
JHU∙CCP | Web Products Manager

This is the second part of a series on the now-in-progress enhancements to the K4Health Web Products Portfolio. Read Part 1 (Photoshare and the Blog).

Updating the Main K4Health.org Site: We Hear You

As you may know, we have been working on several enhancements to K4Health’s web-based products. The next piece of this project to roll out will be a revised www.k4health.org. You’ll see changes within the next few weeks. (Later this spring, we will also be rolling out long-awaited improvements to Toolkits and POPLINE, a second round of Photoshare upgrades, and some more surprises.)

The upcoming changes are our response to the concerns raised by you—the people who rely on K4Health for high-quality, up-to-date information about family planning and reproductive health and related global health issues. We have turned our knowledge management expertise and the best practices we recommend to others onto ourselves. Based on what we found our users need and want, we have revised how we arrange and share knowledge on K4Health.org, our flagship website.

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- K4Health Enhancements
Health Innovations
March 14, 2012
Pay-As-You-Go Solar Lights Up Rural Communities

Stephen Goldstein
JHU∙CCP | Senior Consultant

Rural households in low-income countries often use expensive, unsafe, inefficient, and smoky kerosene-burning lamps as their only source of light, but new solar powered technology is coming to the aid of at least some of the approximately 1.6 billion people (over one-fifth of the world population) who don’t have access to grid electricity.
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March 13, 2012
Kenya Launches Reproductive Health Website

George Obanyi
FHI360/Kenya | Information Officer

Getting the right information at the right time to the people who need it is a big challenge in many countries. A good website with carefully selected materials is one way to ensure policymakers, practitioners, and researchers have access to relevant knowledge and timely information.

Kenya’s Division of Reproductive Health has officially launched its new website (www.drh.go.ke), designed to be a one-stop shop for up-to-date information on reproductive health.

Dr. Isaak Bashir, head of the Division of Reproductive Health, said the website would play an important role in informing health professionals and policymakers on reproductive health issues.

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March 09, 2012
"A New Century: African Women, Health and the Future of Development" In Honor of International Women’s Day

Elsie Minja-Mwaniki
JHU∙CCP | Communications Specialist

A woman’s health is important to not only herself, but to her children and community. Women’s health is necessary for overall prosperity. In Africa the statistics are troubling. One in every twenty six women dies from a complication related to pregnancy and childbirth and women of childbearing age are the demographic group hardest-hit by the HIV/AIDS crisis. In order for measurable progress to be achieved in women’s health, discussions, pledges, and strategies need to become concrete actions.

In honor of International Women's Day, Africare held a meeting on the state of women’s health in Africa at the National Press Club. The event was co-hosted by the United Nations Foundation and Global Health and Diplomacy. In the welcome address, Rep. Karen Bass stated that as as a member of the foreign affairs committee in Congress, she would ensure that discourse surrounding women’s health in Africa would be one of her top priorities.

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March 07, 2012
eHealth in the Field: Inspiring Women and Applied Technology

Cassandra Mickish
JHU∙CCP | Communications Specialist

This past weekend the Bangladesh Knowledge Management Initiative (BKMI) team went to rural Gaibandha in northern Bangladesh. We observed two eHealth programs in action, hoping to learn from their experiences and explore ways to collaborate.

One program that we visited was the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA) initiative. This project provides informational SMS (text) and voice messages in Bangla (the primary language of Bangladesh) to pregnant women and new moms, as well as their husbands, mothers-in-law, and other decision makers in the family. They receive one to two messages a week that are tailored to the week of pregnancy or the age of the child. Messages remind moms and their families about what to expect during pregnancy, warning signs of complications, preparation for childbirth including where to go to deliver, healthy nutrition for mom and baby, breastfeeding, and other issues. The program sends regular health information to families who may have limited access to clinics and providers. Moms that we visited were able to recall messages they had heard and tell us about the resulting changes they made in their diet to improve nutrition.

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Women of the World
March 07, 2012
What Does it Mean to be a Woman in 2012?

Rebecca Shore
JHU∙CCP | Communications Specialist

In this blog series, I try to shine light on positive experiences and progress towards equality for women. But these “bright spots” don’t change the overall picture—that empowering women is still an uphill struggle. As International Women’s Day approaches again this year on March 8^th, I am constantly reminded of the painful, oppressive, and unjust practices that continue to afflict women and girls worldwide..

If it were somehow possible to average out the experiences of all women into a “typical woman,” the picture would be bleak. Compared to men, women are devalued in the workplace, the home, and the community.

Women are disproportionately affected by poverty and homelessness, and are more likely to be targets of violence—particularly intimate partner violence.

In many countries in the Global South, girls are likely to be married before they turn 18, often against their free will.

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March 07, 2012
Supporting Safe Disclosure for Children

Riona Judge McCormack
REPSSI | Communications Officer

A growing body of evidence[i] shows that HIV-positive children who are aware of their HIV status show greater adherence to treatment and an improved sense of well-being. Disclosing their HIV status to children can help ensure they live healthier, longer lives. The most recent WHO guidelines [ii] recommend that “Children of school age should be told their HIV positive status; younger children should be told their status incrementally … in preparation for full disclosure.”.

Yet despite this, many children living with HIV are not aware of their status. REPSSI (the Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative) and partners have found that parents and caregivers struggle with telling their HIV-positive children about their status, and need additional support in doing so.

We must remember also that disclosure to children is a process which must be handled carefully. Health workers, counsellors, and parents require training and preparation, so that appropriate support is provided before, during, and after disclosure.

What can be done to assist parents and health care workers with disclosure to children? REPSSI has developed an initiative to improve physical, mental and social health for children, which can help answer to this question.

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