Author Archives: Allison Howard-Berry

Center for Health Market Innovations Features C2C in New Primary Care Innovator’s Handbook

In an effort to share best practices and encourage partnership and conversation among primary care innovators, the Center for Health Market Innovations (CHMI) recently released a new guide to innovation in primary care, The Primary Care Innovator’s Handbook: Voices from Leaders in the Field.

C2C is featured in the handbook as one of a handful of innovators in this growing field, and is honored to be a part of the global conversation. We believe, along with CHMI and experts from the World Health Organization, that primary care is an absolutely critical part of saving lives in the developing world. The straightforward interventions and preventive care offered by primary care providers combat the most common causes of premature death worldwide, and sharing lessons learned helps ensure that organizations like C2C are able to provide the best possible services to patients.

Next Billion is highlighting the handbook and important innovations in development through a series of blog posts. Please follow us on Facebook to be notified as the next posts are published.

C2C Board Continues To Grow

Our Board of Directors is growing! Care 2 Communities is proud to announce our newest board member, Mona Eliassen. Mona joins as our first new board member for 2015, and will be jumping right into planning efforts as we work toward our newest clinic opening in Northern Haiti this spring!

Considered an industry leader in technology staffing solutions, Mona is the founder of Eliassen Group, a technology staffing and consulting firm. Mona has worked with clients ranging from small startups to Fortune 1000 companies. She was listed as one of Boston Magazine’s “Power: 100 Women Who Run This Town” in 2003, and has been inducted into the Women’s Business “Hall of Fame”.

Mona said, “I am excited to join the Board of C2C, an innovative organization with an inspiring founder, Elizabeth Sheehan. I had the opportunity to visit Haiti last year to see first-hand C2C’s impact in communities they serve, and was impressed with both the business model and the buy-in from the community. I knew that my donation would be used efficiently to provide quality services for families in Haiti, and now I’m delighted to dedicate my time to this mission, as well.”

C2C Using Technology to Survey New Communities in Northern Haiti

As C2C explores potential locations for new clinics, we depend on community feedback and data. Collecting this information is never easy, and C2C faces many logistical challenges as we work to understand each community.

For example, in Haiti, most households don’t have street names or house numbers, which makes precise data collection and tracking difficult. When we interview families about their healthcare needs, it’s important that we’re able to spot trends and begin to understand the region as a whole.

To build a full picture of a community, we are now able to collect data on hand-held tablets that pinpoint the GPS coordinates of each household we visit. We train and deploy survey-takers to different neighborhoods, and ensure that they speak with more than 500 households. The tablets’ GPS technology allows us to verify data to be sure that we’re getting the best possible market information. The interaction between any potential patient and survey-taker is personal and private, and we train our survey-takers to treat family health information with respect and confidentiality.

Our new technology allows us to collect much more local information than we have been able to capture in the past with pen and paper online lipitor. We know that this more detailed and reliable information will not only make it easier to select a community for our next clinic; it will also translate into services better tailored to meet the specific needs of our new patient population.

Haiti – and C2C’s First Clinic – Five Years Later

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake hit Haiti and left, by some estimates, more than 300,000 people dead. C2C was in its infancy then, preparing to ship its first clinic fabricated from shipping containers to a community in the Dominican Republic.

We received a call requesting that we redirect the containers to Port-au-Prince, where the City’s largest provider of maternal and child health care, Grace Children’s Hospital, had seen more than 80% of its examination areas and hospital rooms reduced to rubble.

Thus began C2C’s partnership with Grace, a five-year effort that gives us the opportunity to celebrate:

20,000+ patient visits

1,500+ ultrasounds to detect potential pregnancy risks and gynecological disorders

3,500+ home visits by trained Community Health Workers

5,000+ new enrollees in free family planning programs

A successful rebuilding effort for Grace Children’s Hospital

We are incredibly grateful to our partners at Grace. Together, we have provided quality perinatal care in a safe, respectful setting and built a robust community health education program to support that care. We are delighted that the hospital has been able to rebuild most of its infrastructure, and no longer has a need for the exam, lab, and pharmacy spaces in the containers.Looking to the next five years and beyond, these containers will be refurbished to bring care to thousands more families in a new location in Northern Haiti, where C2C is conducting market research to determine the best community for our newest clinic.Haiti is resilient. Although there is much left to do, much has been accomplished following the devastating quake. As the country continues to rebuild, C2C prepares to serve a new community, bringing high-quality, affordable primary care and free community health education to families in need.Today, and always, our thoughts are with those who lost loved ones in this horrific tragedy and we look forward to being part of Haiti’s bright future.

More Than 60 Community Members Attend Health Information Event in Namibia

Community partnership is key to C2C’s model of care. We do not simply offer health care services; we speak directly with community members to hear what they need, hold information and education sessions at our clinics and in the communities we serve, and work to increase overall health awareness.

In December, C2C hosted an end-of-year community education session at our clinic in the Democratic Resettlement Community near Swakopmund, Namibia. More than 60 women and men attended.

C2C’s Community Health Coordinator, Sister Elago, spoke on a variety of topics, including personal hygiene and food preparation, children’s health, and reproductive health. Other prominent community members joined C2C, and a traditional birth attendant encouraged women to give birth under the supervision of midwives and doctors, in a safe environment.

Attendees were given the opportunity to express their thoughts on the C2C clinic, what other services might be needed, and to ask any questions of the staff. At the end of the meeting, which also served as the staff’s way of thanking community members, guests received gift packets full of healthy cooking ingredients.

C2C’s primary goal is a healthy community, and we know to achieve that we must offer preventative information as well as high-quality care.

Recycled Shipping Containers Provide Flexible Solutions

One of the key aspects of C2C’s innovative solution is our use of flexible infrastructure solutions – converted shipping containers. They are easily sourced, can be packed with all necessary inventory before they are shipped to their final location, and provide straightforward site installation.

For our patients, the container clinics are clean, durable enough to last many years, and allow for a respectful setting to receive care.

Shipping containers are a popular alternative to traditional construction. Many organizations have realized the benefits of retrofitting a container. One example is fellow Boston-based organization Freight Farms. Freight Farms “creates cloud-connected hydroponic farms made from insulated shipping containers”. Their network serves local food producers, ranging from restaurants to food entrepreneurs.

Flexible building solutions like shipping containers create endless possibilities for organizations serving populations in areas where construction is too difficult or time-consuming. From clinics to farms, even small-scale homes, retrofitted containers are highlighting the importance and convenience of flexible infrastructure.

C2C Solicits Community Feedback to Location for First New Clinic in 2015

C2C has been conducting market research in northern Haiti for the past 6 weeks to identify a community for our next clinic. The feedback loop between patients and C2C is strong at our Camp Coq clinic, and we’ve learned what patients value most about the care they receive from us: quality services, caring and attentive staff, and affordable pricing.

We’re asking the same questions of our prospective clients: What do you look for in a health facility? What services do you and your family need? How do you know that the care you are receiving is good? This information is the foundation for C2C’s social business model. Community-based research is a combination of art and science. For that reason, C2C devotes a significant amount of time to the research phase. We ensure that we are hearing and integrating feedback from families across the social-economic spectrum as we make decisions.

What we hear most often is that the quality of health care services in Haiti varies widely. So often, clients are disappointed in their health service providers because the facilities do not have adequate equipment or inventory and because they are not treated well. A positive patient experience is at the heart of the C2C clinic model and we listen closely to the perspective of our partner communities. This week, C2C is conducting more than 500 household surveys (using tablet-based technology) to capture feedback from Haitian people directly about what they most want in their healthcare experience. The thoughts and opinions these families are sharing will directly impact the location of our next clinic as well as the services we offer. We’re looking forward to sharing with you once our new location is determined!

A Big Thank You, From C2C To You!

Maya Angelou said, “When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.”

C2C is blessed to have friends like you. We are incredibly grateful that you have cheerfully and generously helped us provide thousands of families with quality, reliable care this year! A few highlights from 2014:

-Containers 2 Clinics became Care 2 Communities – choosing a refreshed identity that focuses on the valuable services we provide to families.

-In Camp Coq, Haiti, at our newest clinic’s first birthday, we celebrated more than 2,000 patient visits in just one year.

-Our partner in Port-au-Prince, Grace Children’s Hospital, has completed rebuilding after 2010’s disastrous earthquake. This wonderful progress means our container clinic can be moved to provide primary care to families in a new community in 2015.

-In Namibia, we have provided maternal and pediatric care to thousands of women and children, and are fully integrated into the Ministry of Health’s programming, including campaigns to educate school children about the dangers of early pregnancy. We even received a visit from Namibia’s President, Hifikepunye Pohamba!

-We implemented a new electronic medical records system that allows our clinicians to spend more time on patient care and less on paperwork.

-Three new Board members, Dave Adams, Ruthie Barker, and Marie Marthe Saint Cyr, joined us as ambassadors for our mission.

-Two generous anonymous donors offered to match gifts of up to $100,000 between November 1^st and the end of the year. Thanks to many of you, we are about halfway to achieving this goal, and hope to exceed it by the end of the year!

Thanks to your gifts, your support, and your sharing our mission with others, we are looking forward to an amazing 2015. In the coming year, we will launch two additional clinics in Northern Haiti, serving thousands of families who do not currently have access to high-quality care. Please watch for our e-newsletter next week for more updates, stories, and plans for 2015!

All of us at C2C are truly grateful for you and are wishing you a wonderfully happy Thanksgiving!

The Importance of Patient-Centered Care

“Primary care treats the patient as a person, as a whole, in the context of their family and their environment”

The Global Health Blog, The Lancet, featured an article last month about private sector clinic models that are integrating the principles of patient-centered care into every aspect of the business model. The article highlighted the phenomenal work of C2C’s peer organizations in East Africa and India – a group of innovators called The Primary Care Learning Collaborative.

So many global health models and interventions focus on “vertical” issues like HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. It is encouraging to see a resurgence of support for the urgency of primary care platforms. These models, like C2C in Haiti, are often the point-of-entry to the care system for vulnerable people and families. The health of our clients is impacted by so many factors, often exacerbated by poverty and the lack of education and economic opportunity. C2C responds to local health needs by drawing on a continuous feedback loop between the community and the clinic: we build relationships with community groups like churches and schools, foster dialogue and debate through our local clinic Steering Committee, and conduct ongoing patient satisfaction research.

At C2C clinics, we put just as much effort into caring for our clients as we do communicating with them. This approach is fundamental to effective primary care; we help Haitian families get well and stay healthy.

C2C Celebrates Success With Friends!

More than 70 people joined C2C this week for the organization’s annual fall event, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to build sustainable health care for Haitians over the past three years.

C2C’s friends and supporters gathered to hear updates from our Haiti Country Manager, Dr. Jean Eric Calvaire as well as the organization’s plans to open two new clinics in Northern Haiti in 2015.

A big thank you to our hosts, Ruthie and Jeffrey Barker, Miriam and Thomas Christof, Holly Clifford, Victoria and Northrup Knox, Jr., Alison and Bob Murchison, Mary and David Powers, and Elizabeth Sheehan, who did an amazing job creating an enjoyable and informative evening.

Two anonymous funders have generously pledged to match up to $100,000 in gifts through the end of the year. If you donate now, your gift will be doubled. We hope all our friends will help us meet this challenge, and support us as we work to bring sustainable primary care to communities in the developing world.

Check out our Facebook page to see more pictures from the event!

Care 2 Communities