Empowering Community Health Workers Through Digital Tools

Since TIP’s founding, the approach to empower frontline health workers has been to co-design solutions with them in mind, to make their work easier. Here is a story from Christine, a health worker in Rwanda, who helped shape the digital health solution TIP provides today:

In 2003, Christine began work as a nutrition counselor at the Rukura Health Center in Ruli. With limited support, she tried to implement the Rwandan Ministry of Health protocols in her work as best she could. However, she struggled to keep up and keep track of the demanding paperwork these protocols required. Christine found it difficult to provide high quality care because of this disorganization, which left her stressed about the mothers and children she was working to support each day. Her hope for the future of the families she served faltered, and she was left wondering if she would be able to maintain her job. 

TIP Global Health worked with Christine and other frontline health workers to assess the issues standing in their way on a daily basis. Together, they designed E-Heza Data Solutions, a digital tool that replaces manual paperwork and helps frontline health workers focus more on patient care. Adoption of E-Heza resulted in improved efficiency and significant overall time savings, so Christine and her colleagues were able to provide more thorough health and nutrition education as well as support behavior change for mothers and their babies. She formed better relationships with her patients, connecting in a way that enabled them to brainstorm solutions together to the health issues they were facing.

Building a relationship with mothers allowed me to learn how to manage each situation and keep the positive ambitions as TIP trained us to envision.

SHARE THIS STORY