BID Initiative digs into data at Teach to Reach workshop
May 23, 2018
Posted in Monitoring & Evaluation, Packaging, People, Policies & Practices, Practices
Earlier this month, PATH and the BID Initiative participated in the “Teach to Reach: Innovative Methods for Immunization Training” workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from May 1-3. This three-day hands-on forum provided participants with an opportunity to use a design-thinking approach to tackle issues related to workforce performance within immunization programs. Approximately 100 participants from Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, and other global partners attended the workshop. BID participated in a number of sessions, including a well-received demonstration of the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) during the opening night of the workshop.
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JLN countries explore the effective use of data
May 15, 2018
Posted in People, Policies & Practices
The Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), like the BID Learning Network (BLN), is a country-led effort to promote knowledge exchange among peers. Last month, the Information Technology initiative of the JLN convened to discuss a topic familiar to BID – the importance of data use for strong health information systems and improved health outcomes. The following post first appeared on the JLN blog. Having high-quality health care and health insurance data readily available, and knowing how to use it for planning and decision-making, are key goals for countries working toward Universal Health Coverage. From April 4-6, 2018, 30 practitioners from 10 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Americas gathered in Seoul, South Korea, for the second Data Foundations Collaborative workshop.
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BID joins other digital initiatives and stakeholders at the ICT4D conference in Lusaka
May 9, 2018
Posted in People, Policies & Practices, Practices, Products
The BID Initiative is headed to the ICT4D conference in Lusaka, Zambia this week for a chance to share and learn from others in the international development community. The conference convenes public, private and civil society organizations from across the international development community, including professionals with backgrounds in health, agriculture, finance, software development and data use and visualization, to name a few. This year, ICT4D is expected to attract more than 600 participants.
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Tanzania’s digital leadership drives partnerships with JSI, others
May 3, 2018
Posted in People, Policies & Practices, Practices, Products
To be truly successful, data quality and use interventions must be scalable and able to be implemented across different settings with different people and partners beyond the BID Initiative. We are pleased to see these partnerships already taking shape with, for instance, the Catholic Medical Mission Board in Zambia’s Western Province, where the country’s electronic immunization registery is now in use in nine health facilities. Most recently, BID has collaborated with John Snow, Inc.’s (JSI) inSupply project to rollout TImR in Dodoma Region.
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Celebrating progress and looking ahead this World Immunization Week
Apr 27, 2018
Posted in News, People, Policies & Practices, Products
During a recent visit, Regina Chilekwa, a nurse at Mahatma Gandhi Clinic in Livingstone, Zambia, sat with a patient and talked her through the vaccines her young son needed to keep him protected. Every year, at the end of April, the global health community celebrates World Immunization Week, a chance to spotlight the incredible potential of vaccines, progress toward closing the immunization gap, and advocate for the gains that still must be made. Closing the immunization gap requires all hands-on deck. And while coverage has improved greatly in the last few decades, it has recently stagnated. Twenty percent of children still face barriers to vaccination, ranging from a lack of access to services, to weak health information systems, long travel times between facilities, and vaccine stockouts.
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Promising technologies for closing the immunization gap
Apr 13, 2018
Posted in News
Later this month, the global health community will celebrate World Immunization Week, a chance to acknowledge our progress and spread awareness about the collective action needed to ensure that everyone is protected from vaccine-preventable diseases. Achieving full immunization coverage will require better insight into which children are missing out on lifesaving vaccines. Digital innovations are one possible solution. These technologies and big data can help identify patients that are the hardest to reach, predict the spread of disease, and hone vaccination campaigns.
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Honoring data use champions for World Health Worker Week
Apr 5, 2018
Posted in People
This week is World Health Worker Week (WHWW), and the BID Initiative is taking this opportunity to celebrate the individuals on the frontlines who are implementing data quality and use interventions. They are often the backbones of their health systems and their communities’ most trusted source of information for preventing, treating, and managing diseases.
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Success rolls out in Southern Province
Mar 29, 2018
Posted in News, People, Policies & Practices, Practices, Products
When Fred Njobvu, Provincial Coordinator for the BID Initiative in Zambia, looks back on January 2017, he wasn’t sure how the team would manage to roll out data quality and use interventions to the remaining districts in Southern Province. “We were running out of time in our grant,” remembers Fred, “and we needed to deliver interventions to the rest of the province.”
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Planning for compasses, not maps: BID celebrates a culture of learning, applies principles of adaptive management
Mar 16, 2018
Posted in Monitoring & Evaluation, People, Policies & Practices, Practices, Products
Beatrice Owawa’s fingers dance across the screen of her tablet. She nimbly jumps from one window to the next, as she checks vaccine records and stock levels in the Tanzania Immunization Registry (TImR) at Usa River Health Center in Arusha, where she works as a medical attendant. When Beatrice pulls up a list of young patients who have recently missed their vaccines, she takes down their names and contact information and begins to call their caregivers. It may seem unremarkable, but the task of identifying patients who have fallen through the cracks used to be nearly impossible. Before TImR, Beatrice relied on paper registries to track “defaulters,” or patients who had missed a life-saving vaccine.
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Pressing for progress: BID celebrates International Women’s Day
Mar 9, 2018
Posted in General
International Women’s Day is an opportunity to reflect on the role health plays in setting a foundation for girls’ and women’s progress and success. It’s a chance to celebrate both the leaders and the ordinary women who contribute to change; and to emphasize the importance of gender equality. Investing in women’s health and economic freedom helps to break the cycle of poverty, raises Gross Domestic Product, and leads to lasting social gains. This year’s theme is #PressforProgress, and comes on the heels of significant global movements, such as #MeToo, #NiUnaMenos, and countless others. During this year’s advocacy day we celebrate the many women within the BID Initiative family.
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