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URC/CHS News Archives | Contact us | Home URC/CHS NewsURC Presents Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Health Care Quality at 2009 Global Health Council Conference
URC staff presented on topics linked to the conference theme: “New Technologies + Proven Strategies = Healthy Communities.” The theme explored how technologies must be used in tandem with evidence-based strategies for addressing the crisis in human resources and increasing access to and improving quality of care. URC staff ran a workshop, led a panel, and made three presentations. URC Offers “Design your own Health Care Improvement Project: a Skill-Building Workshop”
The USAID Health Care Improvement (HCI) Project ran a full-day workshop that demonstrated how quality improvement (QI) methods can be used to strengthen health care processes in resource-constrained settings. HCI Director Dr. M. Rashad Massoud led the workshop with 14 senior HCI technical staff, engaging some 100 participants in designing their own health care improvement projects.
The workshop featured a case study on maternal and newborn care in Niger that increased compliance with Active Management of Third Stage Labor guidelines and produced a dramatic drop in life threatening post-partum hemorrhages. (See more on Niger outcomes.) Workshop leaders showed participants how to apply quality improvement techniques to design and implement their own improvement project, including: defining improvement goals assembling an improvement team, analyzing processes, developing and testing changes to make improvements to health care systems, and measuring results. “Innovations in Tuberculosis Case Detection and Delivery of Treatment” Panel Features URC Presentations In Swaziland, a severe human resource shortage and high burden of TB/HIV co-infection revealed a need for a simple tool to rapidly detect TB among HIV-positive clients. URC’s Dr. Samson Haumba described how HCI, in partnership with Swaziland’s Ministry of Health, tested a TB screening tool to determine if it could reliably detect tuberculosis and whether community health workers could easily administer it. Results showed that although TB diagnostic tests need further development, rapid scale-up of TB testing is critical to reducing the mortality of HIV patients in Swaziland. Dr. Hung of HCI presented on the results of an improvement collaborative on TB-HIV integration implemented in Vietnam which used quality improvement methods to significantly increase TB case detection among HIV-positive patients. HCI’s Director of Research Leads Panel on “Quality Improvement for Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Programs: Moving Standards to the Field” Dr. Lynne Miller-Franco moderated a panel that focused on how modern quality improvement methods have made a measurable difference in children’s well being and how to support quality improvement efforts for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) services. URC’s Marie-Eve Hammink presented “Road Map to Quality Improvement for Orphan and Vulnerable Children Programs,” describing how a strategic tool, developed by HCI, is helping countries map out steps toward improving the quality of OVC services. Download presentations Designing Your Own Improvement Project Workshop
Innovations in Tuberculosis Case Detection and Delivery of Treatment Panel
Quality Improvement for Orphan and Vulnerable Children (OVC) Programs: Moving Standards to the Field Panel
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At the 2009 Global Health Council Conference, staff presented on how URC projects are using innovative strategies and tools to address many of the key health care challenges developing countries face:
