Community Health 2.0

The objectives are: - Building a virtual space with a focus on community health, providing contextually appropriate contents related to health, hygiene and nutrition. - Improving household access to and use of quality health services through behavior change communications and delivered through of health promoters, supervised by the health professionals. - Provide health information services: Access to specialized health information, access to distance learning courses, access to consultation with expert health personnel, improvement of the epidemiologic surveillance. - In emergency scenarios could be a surveillance system for rapid detection of potential outbreaks in rural settings. We propose to develop Yacha Salud in the 8 poorest regions of Peru, around 5 million people. The target groups for the proposed media project are school children, school teachers; social workers, community leaders, local authorities, health professionals and health promoters. The project will be conducted in three phases: (A) pilot phase in 2 regions (6 months) (B) scale-up phase in 8 regions (12 months) and (C) replication phase (12 months) in the rest of the country. The first two phases will be implemented with the News Challenge funding. Our initiative emphasizes participation of schools. In addition to education the new approach includes education on health, hygiene, nutrition and entrepreneurship. Evidence from around the world demonstrates that investments in public health and education are fundamental to improving human welfare, resistance to disease and reduce poverty. Integrating health, hygiene and nutrition messages into the basic education curriculum, particularly for girls, could be an effective approach to improving health of future generations.



In Peru health problems do not solely rest on the access to health services but the problems are also embedded in behavioral and cultural practices. Cultural practices are particularly influential in matters of food consumption and hygiene. Certain traditional health practices may be preferred by a population simply as a matter of tradition. Our initiative is developed specifically to meet the needs of the rural communities, and school teachers, community leaders, social workers, health professionals and health promoters should be trained to deliver those messages appropriately and enabling then to participate in the creation of content. Content will be designed based on local successful strategies for community health.

In Peru an integrated community health strategy has not until now been implemented on a national or regional scale, whether due to lack of technical capacity, administrative constraints, or lack of political will. - Technology alone will fail and our project provide support with a comprehensive approach and including: technical support, change management, training, coaching and cultural sensitivity. The content will be generated by health professionals from rural communities and we wish them to create their own discussion platforms. They can translate it into native languages and add relevant localized content. -Yacha is a Web2.0 portal based entirely in Drupal and open AJAX. It support spatial DB, APIs, and mobile access via SMS.