Educational Program

In Zimbabwe, thousands of babies are born every year to HIV infected adolescent mothers. These infants suffer significant risks that lead to poor brain development, delayed physical growth and cognitive delays. The Breaking the Chain Project proposes an innovative approach to decrease these risks and improve long term outcomes. The project utilizes Mentor Mothers (MMs) who are HIV positive, aged 18-24 and trained as peer counselors. MMs provide care and support to HIV positive adolescent mothers and their children up to age two.

Atmiyata is a two tiered community-led mental health model that develops the capacity of community volunteers (Champions and Mitras) to detect mental disorders, provide counselling to people with common mental disorders (CMDs), and refer those suffering from severe mental illness to primary care services for more specialized care. Mitras are trained to identify persons with mental health distress and link them to the Champions.

Partners In Health Lesotho (PIHL) will pilot the integration of an early childhood development (ECD) intervention into an existing primary care platform across the continuum of facility- and community-based care in a poor, mountainous area of Mohale’s Hoek, Lesotho. Mothers and other caregivers will learn parenting behavior and developmental interactions during postnatal clinic visits and home visits by village health workers (VHWs), improving access for this hard-to-reach population.

The ABAaNA Early Intervention study will investigate whether a community-based training programme for carers of young children affected by newborn brain injury can improve the early brain development and quality of life of Ugandan children, and their families. Each year, around the world, millions of infants are at risk of delays in their developmental progress or disability as a result of newborn conditions like prematurity and lack of oxygen at birth. These newborn conditions are common in developing countries, but care for affected children is often not available.

This seed funding will enable us to demonstrate that replacing institutional care in Tajikistan with an innovative set of interventions (family support, early child development services through community-based outreach and alternative family care including foster care) has a positive effect on child brain development in the first 1000 days. The project will enhance practical skills of health workers and parents to stimulate child development and support existing institutions to build a multidisciplinary ‘Team Around the Child’.

We will provide psychosocial support (PSS) and skills training to marginalized married girls, adolescent mothers and pregnant girls in Malawi to improve their own wellbeing and their babies’ health. PSS will assist adolescents to develop resilience and manage stress caused by poverty, forced marriage, gender based violence, unwanted pregnancies and social stigma. We will empower them with parenting skills, nutritional care, child care and stimulation so that they can develop strong bonds with their infants and improve early brain development within the first 1000 days of the baby’s life.

In Pakistan, about one third of young children are estimated to suffer from development delays. The public facilities remain an accessible source of health care for rural and poor communities. Delivering integrated ECD care, of "0 - 24" month old, at public health facilities is a program priority (8). A package for integrated ECD care of "0 - 12" month old is available (10) and currently being implemented; but ECD care of "13 - 24" month old is yet to be developed. The "Project" will address the need for a contextualized ECD care of "13 - 24" month old.

This initiative connects health education, environmental awareness, scientific discovery and community-based action in a citizen science effort with direct benefits to NASA science and public health decision-making. Using the GLOBE Program’s Mosquito Protocol, citizen scientists collect and share mosquito data and then use the data to develop a local mitigation strategy that reduces the risk of disease in their communities.

Ashenafi Tazebew of the University of Gondar in Ethiopia will develop a training and supervision program whereby medical and nursing staff working at local health science colleges in Ethiopia are trained to teach and mentor local health care workers to improve their skills, and the quality and safety of immunizations, thereby increasing uptake. They will develop supervisory and mentorship guidelines and tools, and train college workers how to coach primary health care providers and review their performances.

Bernard Appiah of Texas A&M School of Public Health in the U.S. will produce a one-hour community radio program to be aired twice per week comprising a 10-minute radio drama serial on infant vaccines, a 10-minute panel discussion by community health workers, and a 30-minute phone-in by listeners, to improve on-time childhood vaccinations in Ethiopia. In 2016, on-time and full immunization coverage in Ethiopia was only achieved for 39% of children between one and two years of age, despite long-term efforts to improve it.