Health Promotion from Haiti to Boston

Lulu Tsao, Staff Writer

Courtesy of PACT

As she talks about the recovery of one of her clients, Magalie Lamour-Médé’s voice is filled with warmth and pride. When they first met, Lamour-Médé’s client was “literally at death’s door.” Struggling with HIV/AIDS, she weighed only 84 pounds and had difficulty adhering to her medications. After joining the Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment project (PACT), the patient not only regained weight and suppressed her viral load, but also improved her relationship with her teenage daughter and overcame substance abuse.

As one of PACT’s community health promoters, Lamour-Médé serves some of the most marginalized AIDS patients in the Boston area. A joint project of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the nonprofit Partners in Health (PIH), PACT began in 1999 to assist patients who have poor access to and utilization of healthcare. Its community-based model comes from PIH’s work in Haiti, where accompagnateurs provide directly observed therapy (DOT) and social support. Here in Boston, PACT’s major initiatives—harm reduction, health promotion, and DOT—seek to address AIDS from prevention to care.

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Cell phones 4 p8tients n MDz

Alexis Karlin, Staff Writer

Throughout the world, engineers and innovators have been asking themselves this question: what if cell phones played a key role in health care? What if all one needed to update and check one’s medical records and to communicate with one’s physician was a Blackberry, cellular phone, or Palm Pilot? From these questions grew the technological movement that is developing rapidly in the United States and elsewhere, promising great benefits for the health care system.

Experts say that this innovation, known as “Mobile Health,” could potentially save the American health system hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of dollars, if implemented within the coming years. Already utilized in Europe, Mobile Health has been steadily gaining momentum in the American system. Its imminent application into the medical world promises to bring financial benefits and improve the facility and efficiency of patient-physician relations. As the population grows and ages, doctors are in increasingly higher demand, but they have a limited amount of time with each patient. Developers of Mobile Health technology hope that their products will remedy this issue.

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The key to effective care in rural Rwanda

Alison Kraemer, Staff Writer

The primarily rural population of Rwanda faces seemingly overwhelming barriers to obtaining quality healthcare where there is only one doctor for every 20,000 people.  The government of one of the world’s poorest nations has sought for over a decade to revitalize the shattered post-genocide health system.  To strengthen public healthcare for the impoverished and underserved people of Rwanda, the non-governmental organization Partners In Health (PIH) partnered with the Clinton Foundation and the Rwandan Ministry of Health (MOH) in April 2005 to bring its model of comprehensive community-based care, developed over several decades in rural Haiti, to Rwanda.¹ In fact, PIH boldly instituted resources often overlooked in global health delivery – Community Health Workers, or CHWs.  As members of their local villages, the CHWs are employed, trained, and compensated by PIH and the Rwandan MOH to invest in personal home-based care.

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Fighting Tuberculosis in India

Becky Martinez, Staff Writer

After day upon day of sifting through trash searching for small treasures that can be recycled for cash, 19-year-old Akhil begins having a simple cough.  Soon this cough has spiraled out of control and is defined by the blood-tinged sputum.  Akhil has tuberculosis. Soon he spreads the infection his four family members who all reside with him in a 64 foot-squared hut.

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Merging the worlds of business and healthcare

Sarah Littlehale, Staff Writer

“He who has health, has hope. And he who has hope, has everything,” or so goes the Arab proverb. Unfortunately, far too few people in this world have such hope.  In the eyes of many, healthcare has become a luxury for the rich yet remains fragmented and uncoordinated in the world’s most impoverished regions.  The founders of BroadReach Healthcare chose to imagine the world differently.

BroadReach is an international consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. and South Africa specializing in global healthcare management.

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