Health

  • May 21, 2012

    FANTA – A Technical Assistance Program that Improves Nutrition for People Living with HIV

    Written by
    Melanie Remane, Nutritionist, FANTA Project, FHI 360

    Arénia Massingue is a master trainer from the National Nurses Association in Mozambique (Associação Nacional de Enfermeiros em Moçambique [ANEMO]). Massingue, who was trained by the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance (FANTA) project on home-based nutrition care for people living with HIV (PLHIV), explains how what she learned helped her work: “We can now see a change in behavior among our beneficiaries. Before health activists started educating them about nutrition, there was a common belief that eating well was eating purchased goods. For example, many believed that the best fruit juice was the one they bought from the store, even though they had oranges in their garden. Now they know that the oranges in their garden can produce a juice that is not only cheaper, but also more nutritious.”

    Since being trained by FANTA, ANEMO master trainers trained 55 community-based organization (CBO) trainers. To date, the CBO trainers have trained 440 heath activists, home-based health care workers who provide counseling to PLHIV. PLHIV are counseled on the importance of using locally available foods in a balanced diet, management of HIV-related symptoms through diet, and potential drug-food interactions. Health activists also provide cooking demonstrations using recipes they learned during the training to help PLHIV meet their increased energy needs and eat a balanced, healthy diet. ANEMO, the Ministry of Women and Social Welfare and Ministry for Health are also working in collaboration with FANTA to integrate nutrition into the government’s official training curriculum for home-based care workers.

    FANTA is a project that works globally to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable groups through technical support to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its governmental and nongovernmental partners. The project improves nutritional outcomes by strengthening policies, programs and systems for maternal and child health and nutrition, nutrition and HIV and other infectious diseases, food security and livelihood strengthening, agriculture and nutrition linkages, and emergency assistance during nutrition crises.

    For more information about FANTA, email the project at fantamail[at]fhi360.org.

  • May 17, 2012

    Getting Closer to an AIDS-Free Generation

    Written by
    Alessandro Gravina, Technical Officer, Center on AIDS & Community Health, FHI 360

    May 18th is HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD), an annual observance that recognizes the contributions of thousands of volunteers, community members, health professionals, scientists, and experts in the HIV/AIDS field who are committed to working together to find an HIV vaccine. This year, we acknowledge the participation of thousands of trial volunteers who have made the research possible, and we highlight recent progress that gives us hope that controlling this epidemic is within our reach.

    Great strides have been made in the three decades since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the first cases of what we know today as HIV/AIDS. What was considered a death sentence in the early 80s is now a manageable chronic condition for those living with HIV who have access to medications. However, about 30 million people globally have died as a result of HIV/AIDS, and 50,000 Americans still become infected every year. Despite the profound impact this disease continues to have in our communities, new developments in HIV prevention efforts inspire us with the hopeful expectation of an AIDS-free generation.

    Recent advances in biomedical HIV prevention research have included microbicides and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Microbicides are gels or creams that both women and men can use topically to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV. Other products, such as films, suppositories, vaginal rings or sponges, are also being developed to release the active ingredients in the body over time. The microbicides that have proven to be partially effective to date contain an anti-HIV drug known as Tenofovir. PrEP is an approach that involves the use of oral anti-HIV drugs taken by uninfected individuals to prevent HIV infection if exposed to the virus. One drug, known as Truvada, has been shown to be effective in some populations. Consequently, on May 10, an advisory committee recommended that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approve the use of Truvada as part of PrEP to prevent sexually transmitted HIV-1 infection. While both of these prevention strategies have varying degrees of protection against HIV, adding a safe, effective and durable vaccine to the combination of available prevention tools remains our best hope to ending the pandemic.

    Scientists believe that it will take more than one approach to control the spread of HIV in the world. PrEP, microbicides and HIV vaccines, along with other proven prevention methods such as the regular use of condoms, are essential components of a comprehensive approach to global HIV prevention efforts. But, the success of the research in all these areas greatly depends on community participation and involvement as well as establishing trusting relationships within the communities most affected by HIV.

    Collaboration among scientists, community leaders, and advocacy groups is essential for the fight against HIV/AIDS. In January 2012, the Be The Generation Bridge (BTG Bridge) program was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to help increase awareness and understanding of biomedical HIV prevention research, including HIV vaccines. To learn more about this research and view community profile videos, visit www.youtube.com/bethegeneration.

  • May 9, 2012

    A Grandmother’s Tribe

    A great international exchange program goes beyond sharing knowledge and ideas. It empowers participants to become agents of change in their own communities. Through Felix Masi’s participation in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), he received leadership and media training from US Government officials and prominent youth and non-profit leaders. This training motivated him to document the story of a community’s personal response to the global AIDS epidemic.

    Felix, a Kenyan-born American, used the ideas he gained through IVLP, funded by the U.S. Department of State, to share the story of a challenge he witnessed growing up in Kenya. In rural Western Kenya, many children lose their parents to AIDS, and grandmothers often assume the burden and care for the orphaned children. His documentary, “A Grandmother’s Tribe,” tells the story of resilience and sacrifice in the face of a lost generation.

    Further leveraging the skills honed during his exchange program, Felix founded Voiceless Children to help teach Kenyan caregivers life skills that promote self-sufficiency. To date, Voiceless Children has helped provide education and shelter for over 40 families in Western Kenya and Kibera, Kenya’s poorest slum. We are proud of program alumni like Felix, leaders who use these exchange programs to develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills that benefit not only themselves but also their communities.

    Please join us on Thursday, May 10th at 5:30pm in FHI 360’s Globe Theater for a screening of “A Grandmother’s Tribe,” followed by a panel discussion featuring Felix and other distinguished speakers. A special viewing of a follow-on video that tracks the progress of the grandmothers will also be shown. Please RSVP here.

    Homepage banner image from Borderless Productions.

  • May 8, 2012

    The importance of including healthy habits in education programs

    An Interview with
    Sergio Ramirez, Senior Project Director, Global Education Group, FHI 360
    Why is it important that education programs include lessons on healthy lifestyle habits?

    We talk so much about reading and literacy in global education, but that is just one part of a child’s life. If we want to look at development in a holistic way, we have to look at a child in his or her entirety, not just his or her academic ability. There is plenty of evidence out there that shows that schools with better sanitary conditions attract more children. Parents vote with their feet, and if they see a school that is clean, has food and has hand-washing facilities, they are more likely to enroll their child in that school.

    How do you see this kind of integration playing out in global education programs?

    My dream is that we can inject health messages into teachers’ daily lesson planning, especially in primary education. Four major areas of concern are oral hygiene, handwashing and sanitation, malaria prevention and nutrition. Handwashing and proper use of latrines should be part of every school’s daily routine. Research shows that promoting handwashing in students, especially when they first arrive at school, greatly reduces the number of sick days among children.

    In Latin America, proper nutrition is a major issue. Children are eating, but they are not getting the proper nutrients. They tend to eat a lot of junk food that is easily accessible in their neighborhoods.

    Other than teachers, who else can help promote healthy habits in education?

    Part of the magic of FHI 360’s active learning methodology is that we integrate parents’ participation in very specific ways. We have done this by asking parents to help schools provide children with breakfast each morning, and we have engaged parent associations to improve sanitation in schools. By actively engaging parents in daily school routines, they not only participate in the success of the schools, but also learn healthy habits themselves. This takes some of the burden off of teachers.

  • April 30, 2012

    “A product that pretty much sells itself”: Packaging our field experience so it’s irresistible

    Written by
    Ann Jimerson, Senior Specialist for Behavior Change, Alive & Thrive, FHI 360

    A version of this post originally appeared on K4 Health’s Blog. Reposted with permission.

    While working on a U.S.-based project on obesity, I’d had a gratifying experience with concept testing. It confirmed what I’d thought for a long time – that concept testing, or trying a variety of concepts or message approaches with real audience members, can help you hone in on messages that really resonate.

    I wanted to share my excitement and convince my international development colleagues that concept testing could work for them, too. So, I put together a PowerPoint for practitioners like myself, in the business of behavior change.

    Despite a warm reception from my colleagues at a lunchtime presentation, a couple of eager 20-somethings were having trouble keeping their eyes open for the full 40 minutes. I tried again in one of our field offices overseas, but it didn’t really make sense to them because the whole project, focusing on obesity, was so very American. And even with a select, receptive audience (okay, I guess people closer to my demographic could sit through it…), my beautifully animated PowerPoint didn’t work without me there to deliver the story. I had a product, but I had to work pretty hard to sell it.

    What I needed was a product that pretty much sells itself.

    I needed a new case study on concept testing: one that featured an experience outside the U.S., and one that people could use and navigate on their own time and at their own pace. I turned to a younger colleague on our project, one who had been teaching herself the basics of video editing, is not intimidated by online mechanics, has a great sense of design, and “gets it” when it comes to behavior change.

    Fortunately, our staff in Bangladesh liked the idea of concept testing, and with a little coaching by e-mail, had tried a version of it themselves. They were sold on concept testing as a way to focus their messaging before they dove into script writing for TV spots. Now we had a non-U.S.-based story to share.

    My colleague and I shut the office door and surfed YouTube. We had a sweeping story that we wanted to tell succinctly. We typed in “movie trailers.” Voila: Gone with the Wind, the whole epic story summed up in 2½ minutes. We knocked ourselves out with a funny “how to” video on making a poster, and a complex lecture about the changing world of work, amusingly illustrated with text and cartoons, drawn as we watched.

    Inspired, we started writing scripts for our own short “how to” videos and cobbled together some mock-ups, using the visuals and software we had at hand.

    With no budget beyond our labor, we built a prototype web site with three short videos and took it out for a road test. We sat with a few colleagues and asked them to open the Beta version. One reviewer reminded us that a popular book on Web design is titled “Don’t make me think.” We reworked the page to make its purpose clear. We learned a lot about how to make our content shorter . We watched as people puzzled over what the site offered them – then taught ourselves to write explicit, brief text to tell them how they could put the tools to use. We learned that busy practitioners would delight in a sample script or research instrument. They told us they would download it and tuck it away for a training or technical assistance opportunity.

    We launched in late March 2012. Already we’ve seen an uptick in visits to Alive & Thrive’s (A&T) Web site. During the three weeks after launch, the rate of people visiting the A&T site was almost double the rate of visitors in several recent months. We’ve gotten practitioners’ attention. One official cited the case study kit as the reason she thought to invite our Bangladesh country director to present at a regional conference.

    Right now we’re deep into scripting our second kit: this one on engaging fathers in infant and young child feeding. And building on what we’ve learned, this time the videos will be two to three minutes, not four to five.

    Technology makes glitz easy. But it takes more than glitz. Thinking like marketers has taken us a bit closer to building a product that “pretty much sells itself.”

     

  • April 25, 2012

    Rural Cambodians Fight Malaria

    In the beautiful and remote Cambodian province of Pailin, FHI 360 is working with rural communities to reduce malaria transmission and save lives.

    With support from the Global Fund through the Village Malaria Workers program, FHI 360 has trained people in 28 villages across this region to provide malaria education, diagnosis and treatment. Village workers have provided malaria testing to 13,351 fever patients in these remote areas, and have treated over 3,000 patients for malaria.

    This World Malaria Day, visit Pailin by video. Your guide is an FHI 360 malaria program coordinator who shares how the program works.

    Visit this page for more information about our recent work in Pailin, Cambodia.

  • April 24, 2012

    Screen Time vs. Lean Time

    Kids in the United States spend a shocking amount of time in front of a screen each day. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, kids ages 8–18 spend an average of 7.5 hours of time in front of a screen for entertainment — be it a television, computer, videogame, tablet or smart phone. And to be clear, this isn’t time spent on the computer for school work, but rather time spent relaxing and having fun. And it really adds up — over a year, 7.5 hours per day comes to 114 days of total entertainment screen time!

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that kids get at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day, and time in front of a screen is time not spent being physically active. In an era when about one in six kids is obese, more than triple the number from 30 years ago, families and communities are getting engaged to make a change.

    Working with the CDC, FHI 360 has developed an interactive and animated infographic called Screen Time vs. Lean Time, which addresses just some of the ways kids can be physically active instead of staring at a screen. It also provides tips for parents on ways to limit their own child’s screen time.

    Click the image below to view the interactive infographic!

    Scree time vs. Lean time

    For more information about the work that we do in social marketing and communication, visit smcc.fhi360.org.

  • April 5, 2012

    The Stories Behind the Statistics

    “The Stories Behind the Statistics” is a series put together for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation‘s blog “Impatient Optimists” by the Interagency Youth Working Group (IYWG). The IYWG, housed here at FHI 360, provides technical leadership to improve the reproductive and sexual health of young people. The following posts were originally posted on “Impatient Optimists” and are reposted here with permission. All photos courtesy of the Gates Foundation.

    • Young People and HIV

      Last August, during World Youth Day in Madrid, I was conducting outreach to encourage Catholic youth to use condoms. It was there that I heard one of the most frightening things ever: One young man told me that an HIV-positive person had no right to have sex...

      Read More
    • Family Planning for Young Women

      I lead a support group for mothers ages 12-19, in Kenya. Most of the mothers I work with are out-of-school youth; many live on the streets, work in the informal economy, or are orphaned. As a part of our support program, we provide weekly peer-to-peer sessions focusing on uptake of antenatal care...

      Read More
    • Youth Reproductive and Sexual Health

      By the end of today, 2,500 young people will become infected with HIV and 1,400 girls and women will die in childbirth...

      Read More
  • March 23, 2012

    STOP TB in My Lifetime — World TB Day

    Written by
    Carol Dukes Hamilton, MD, MHS, Senior Scientist, FHI 360

    Greetings to all! I recently had the opportunity to work with colleagues from FHI 360 and the National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) and National AIDS Program (NAP) in Indonesia. FHI 360 is a collaborating partner for USAID-sponsored work in Indonesia under the project called TB CARE I. We work with the Dutch organization KNCV, the World Health Organization and others to focus on integrating tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS activities and to improve access to TB care and treatment within prisons across that large and complex country.

    Why are we at FHI 360 so focused on TB-HIV/AIDS integration? For a number of years, we have been working with governments to build stronger HIV/AIDS programs around the globe. What we and others have learned is that the number-one killer of people living with HIV/AIDS is TB. There is a very close, causal link between TB and HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS makes it many times more likely that a person will get sick with or die from TB. In addition, TB makes the HIV/AIDS virus replicate even more quickly, leading to further immune suppression and AIDS-related illness and death. Recent published research has shown that life-saving interventions include rapid initiation of TB treatment after diagnosis and rapid initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) after TB treatment gets started. Furthermore, isoniazid preventive treatment (IPT) can save lives by keeping people with HIV/AIDS from getting TB. An even more powerful approach for individuals already infected with the HIV virus is to get them started on ART before their immune systems become too weak.

    In addition to my key objective of reviewing our TB-HIV/AIDS activities and the prison program, I served as a plenary speaker at the Indonesia Infectious Diseases Update Symposium in Malang, Indonesia. I also provided lectures and on-site consultation for members of the NTP, NAP and FHI 360 staff, focusing on multi-drug resistant TB, TB-HIV/AIDS and IPT. Our discussions showed how challenging it is to implement good programs with limited resources.

    Other TB-related issues are also critical to solve. These include improving universal access to high-quality TB diagnosis and treatment, preventing spread of disease from one person to the next — especially within hospitals and clinics — and identifying and preventing disease among young children, who are at high risk for severe TB. USAID-TB CARE I provides funding to FHI 360 to work on these and related issues in Cambodia, Indonesia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Zambia.

    In keeping with the theme for World TB Day 2012, “STOP TB in My Lifetime,” I want to see the epidemic of TB-HIV/AIDS become a distant memory. I am happy to report that my colleagues in Indonesia are working hard to make this come true.

    World TB Day is Saturday, March 24, 2012. For more information, please visit the Stop TB Partnership’s World TB Day site.

  • March 22, 2012

    FHI 360 Celebrates World Water Day

    Written by
    Katie Carroll, Secretariat Coordinator, Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing, FHI 360
    Patricia Mantey, Knowledge Management Specialist, WASHplus Project., FHI 360

    Americans on average use 400 liters of water per day and Europeans use 200 liters of water per day. Yet, in the developing world the average person uses only 10 liters of water per day, and this water may not even be safe for drinking.

    World Water Day, held every March 22, brings attention to the fact that much of the world still struggles daily to get enough water for drinking, sanitation and hygiene. We can all have a role in improving this situation. The theme for World Water Day this year is Water and Food Security. Do you know how much water you consume every day and how much water it took to produce the food you eat? How can you change your diet and your habits to reduce your water footprint? To learn how much water you use and get a full list of events worldwide, visit the U.N.’s World Water Day site. In Washington, D.C., the World Water Day DC Coalition has two full days of events planned for March 21-22. For more information about these events, visit www.waterday.org.

    FHI 360 and its partners have adapted innovative ways to help families living in water-scarce locations engage in good hygiene practices and ensure there is enough clean, safe water to drink and a way to wash hands, even if there is no running water. A simple, easy-to-make devise known as a tippy tap can be made using local materials. One kind of tippy tap can be made by hanging a water-filled plastic bottle with holes in the cap to act as a faucet. When set up around a home or schoolyard, children can be taught the importance of washing their hands at appropriate times — especially before eating and after using the toilet. (Learn how to make a tippy tap here). In addition, rain water harvesting can collect water from the roof of a house to use for hand washing, bathing, watering gardens and other household uses.

    The WASHplus project, led by FHI 360 and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, supports healthy households and communities by creating and delivering interventions that lead to improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). WASHplus recently initiated a project in Zambia to work with schools in two provinces to increase their ability to provide adequate water and hygiene and sanitation facilities for students. Reliable supplies of safe drinking water, as well as water for hand washing and latrines, can contribute to improved attendance and better learning through fewer days lost to diarrheal diseases and other illnesses. And fewer girls will need to miss school or drop out because of a lack of water or a separate latrine, which is especially important for menstrual hygiene as girls grow older.

    FHI 360 is also the coordinator for the Public–Private Partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW), an international coalition to promote hand washing and child health globally. The PPPHW supports organizations that want to increase hand washing in their communities. For example, a nongovernmental organization called Share Our Lunch, which provides healthy meals and health education to vulnerable communities in Ghana, reached out to the PPPHW for help. Share Our Lunch wanted advice on how to incorporate hand-washing training into their community lunches. The PPPHW introduced them to tippy taps and directed them to the necessary resources. Share Our Lunch now reports that the tippy taps are a great success, with kids clamoring to use this “fun” new technology to wash their hands before they eat.