Blog Post

Solution Initiative on Community Health Workers Announced

  • By Lauren Barredo
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  • 25 Jan, 2013
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Jan 24: DAVOS, Switzerland . Across sub-Saharan Africa, community health workers using mobile phones and broadband access to sophisticated medical resources are delivering health care to where it is most needed, among the rural poor. A new campaign aims to greatly expand that effort by training, equipping and deploying one million health care workers by the end of 2015, reaching millions of underserved people.
At the World Economic Forum today, Rwanda President Paul Kagame and Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez joined Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs in announcing the campaign, which will be overseen by a steering committee at the Earth Institute and will be run through the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network as part of its Solutions Initiative. The effort is also supported by the UN MDG Advocates and the UN Broadband Commission, both of which are co-chaired by President Kagame.
“As President of Rwanda and Co-chair of the Millennium Development Goals Advocates Group and the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development, I wholeheartedly endorse the ‘One Million Community Health Worker Campaign’ to scale up community health workers throughout Africa,” said Kagame. “In Rwanda we have seen the ability of community health workers to improve public health and believe that this initiative can serve the cause of public health throughout Africa. This campaign will support many ongoing public-private partnerships, United Nations initiatives, and African Union efforts to meet the health Millennium Development Goals.”
At the event, Jimenez announced that Novartis will donate $1 million to support the training and development of the cadre of new health workers.
“Access to medicines and health care, especially in rural areas, remains the most significant obstacle to the provision of healthcare for all,” said Jimenez. “In this respect, the One Million Community Health Worker campaign is going to make a huge difference. Trained community health workers — equipped with cell phones that allow them to get telemedical advice — can transform the rural health situation.”
In sub-Saharan Africa, around 10 percent of children die before reaching the age of five. Maternal death rates are high. Many people suffer unnecessarily from preventable and treatable diseases, from malaria and diarrhea to tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. Many of these residents would otherwise have little or no access to the most fundamental aspects of modern medicine. Many countries are struggling to make progress toward the health-related Millennium Development Goals partly  because so many people live in rural areas beyond the reach of modern health care.
“The campaign will transform health care delivery across the continent and help some of the world’s poorest nations meet the health-related Millennium Development Goals,” said Sachs. “We are proud to be working with Novartis to launch this campaign and to work with African leaders to develop huge new cadres of community health workers to reach the rural populations.”
Community health worker programs have been in place for a number of years, through government health programs and other non-governmental initiatives, like the Millennium Villages Project. In addition to providing basic treatment and preventative care, the health workers keep track of disease outbreaks and overall public health, and offer a vital link to the broader health care system of doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics.
While they have limited clinical training, the health workers are supervised by more clinically skilled members of the health care system. Scaling in this way allows an opportunity to tailor the program to each nation’s particular needs and systems.
The new campaign will work with governments and aid agencies to finance and train the health workers, each of whom would serve an average of 650 rural inhabitants, at an estimated cost of $6.58 per patient per year. This adds up to an estimated $2.5 billion, which includes funding already being spent by NGOs and governments on these programs. These estimates fall within projected governmental health budgetary constraints and are within the boundaries of donor assistance already pledged and anticipated.
The campaign will work closely with national governments in Africa and other NGOs, bilateral aid organizations and UN agencies. The campaign aims to boost the Community Health Worker programs and policies of many leading institutions, including: GAVI Alliance, Glaxo Smith Kline, Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, RESULTS, Roll Back Malaria, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UNAIDS, UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development, United Nations, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, USAID, WHO, the World Bank, Millennium Villages Project, and Millennium Promise. For more information, please visit: http://1millionhealthworkers.org.

SDSN Newsletter - July 2021

By SDSN Secretariat • 03 Aug, 2021 •
This month, SDSN celebrated its growing network, talked about the incredible amount of media coverage on the 2021 SDR, and reflected on this year's High Level Political Forum

WRI Report Spotlight: “Unlocking a Renewable Energy Future: How Government Action Can Drive Private Investment”

By Fiona Laird • 02 Aug, 2021 •
World Resources Institute recently released Unlocking a Renewable Energy Future: How Government Action Can Drive Private Investment, a report outlining key challenges to increasing clean energy investment and deployment. This report digs into the financial and regulatory mechanisms available to support policy frameworks like that outlined in SDSN USA’s Zero Carbon Action Plan (ZCAP), released in October 2020.

European Commission launches proposals to reach 55% emissions reduction by 2030

By Sam Van Hoof • 30 Jul, 2021 •
The ‘Fit for 55' package includes a ban on combustion engines from 2035, a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, and a Social Climate Fund among other provisions.

SDSN Canada 2021 Members Meeting Recap

By Giovanni Bruna • 29 Jul, 2021 •

SDSN Canada reconvened the network membership on June 16th, 2021 for the annual Members Meeting.

This year's meeting featured conversations on the current state of the SDGs in Canada, emerging opportunities for post-secondary institutions, networking breakout sessions, and a featured joint presentation by the Brookings Institution and Rockefeller Foundation on mobilizing campuses and communities for the SDGs using the 17 Rooms initiative. A lightning round of member initiatives was also included to highlight a portion of the SDG work happening across the network.

Recap the discussion by reading the meeting notes   or listening to the audio recordings for each session.

Meeting Highlights:

  • The SDSN Global annual Sustainable Development Report 2021  was released June 2021, tracking progress on the SDGs by country (Canada ranked 21st in the world). The report outlines the short-term impacts of COVID-19 on the SDGs and describes how the SDGs can frame the recovery.
  • The Government of Canada has released Canada’s National Strategy for the SDGs, Moving Forward Together. The strategy outlines a set of 30 actions towards the SDGs, including localizing the SDGs, supporting partnerships with Indigenous initiatives, and advancing research into the gaps in Canada's efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda.
  • The 17 Rooms initiative  is a tool for advancing SDG collaboration, community-centric conversations, and bottom-up action. There are three key principles of consideration:
    • Every SDG gets a seat at the table (a dedicated room).
    • Identify what the next step is, and not the perfect step. What are things you can do together over the next 12 to 18 months that you can implement action on the SDGs?
    • It is about conversations, not presentations. The goal is to learn from each other and create a community of practice.
    • Join the 17 Rooms-X Community of Practice to access the beta toolkit.
  • A ‘lightning round’ of presentations by members spotlighting SDG work from Colleges and Institutes Canada, the Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Operationalization of Sustainable Development (CIRODD), Vancouver Island University, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of Waterloo.

The meeting was also a chance to invite the membership into initiatives designed to be more intentional about the network’s collective presence and impact. In this vein, the network thinks that the 17 Rooms process can be a critical resource for campus conversations on the SDGs. It also relaunched the Member Challenge , is starting the ‘SDG Teaching Community’ for faculty across the network, and is convening a small working group of interested members to talk about an enhanced governance structure for the network.

Public Consultation on SPA Report

By Lauren Barredo • 29 Jul, 2021 •
We encourage stakeholders to provide meaningful input to aid the development of a better and more complete report. We invite feedback from individuals and organizations, from all sectors.

Environmental and Agricultural Impacts of Dietary Shifts at Global and National Scales

By FABLE • 28 Jul, 2021 •
The FABLE Consortium is releasing two policy briefs over the coming months intended to advise national governments on sustainable land-use and diets. The first brief, entitled “Environmental and agricultural impacts of dietary shifts at global and national scales'' is now available.

Media Coverage of the Sustainable Development Report 2021

By SDG Index • 23 Jul, 2021 •
The Sustainable Development Report 2021 has been covered by the BBC, the Guardian, Washington Post, and more than 100 other media outlets.

The Multidimensional Vulnerability Index and Small Island Developing States (SIDS)

By Isabella Massa • 21 Jul, 2021 •
SDSN together with the United Nations Resident Coordinators in SIDS and the Permanent Mission of Antigua and Barbuda hosted on 12 July 2021 a High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) side event to discuss the issue of measuring multidimensional vulnerability, and its relevance for international financing mechanisms.

SDGs Today Launches My School Today!

By SDGs Today • 20 Jul, 2021 •
SDGs Today recently launched their My School Today! call to action, meant to support students and local communities to geo-reference their schools and education facilities as part of an effort to promote timely information on school locations in Africa

SDSN at the 2021 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF)

By SDSN Secretariat • 20 Jul, 2021 •
SDSN and our networks are hosting a number of events alongside the UN's High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). We are thrilled to invite you to join us at the following events, which SDSN is hosting or are organized by our partners.
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