Hope is Blooming
It was wonderful to be back with our friends and colleagues in Detroit! We were so inspired by the tridirectional learning and commitment to harnessing Hope to drive health equity and reverse maternal mortality from Rwanda to Detroit, Michigan and Watsonville, California!
Hope is the unspoken yet essential fuel that powers effective primary health care delivery- regardless of location. At TIP Global Health, we are proving this! In Rwanda, we created the Hope Framework to understand factors that influence hope among frontline health workers, pregnant women, and women with children under five years old. This transformational research is redefining quality of care from the lens of hopefulness, and holding local healthcare delivery systems accountable for creating an enabling environment to deliver hope-inspiring healthcare.
In February 2020, just as the covid-19 pandemic was emerging, we had the opportunity to travel to Detroit, Michigan for a three day workshop to share our research and approach with our colleagues at the Henry Ford Health System’s Global Health Initiative. Since then, our team has guided the Detroit researchers as they delve into the influences of hope among Black women and local clinicians with the aim of eliminating maternal mortality among Black women in their communities. Earlier this month, we had the great honor of returning to Detroit to learn about their Hope in Detroit findings, share our progress in Rwanda, and to join in the development of interventions designed to inspire hope and engage Black women in high quality pregnancy care.
The experience was magical! Community leaders from across Detroit- including Wayne State University School of Medicine, Henry Ford Health System, the Detroit Health Department, Brilliant Detroit, Women Inspired Network (WIN), and Birth Detroit- came together to co-create interventions designed to inspire hope among both Black women and the clinicians who provide their care. As one example, a perceived lack of social safety net resources was identified as a barrier to hope for both patients and clinicians. While there are many resources across Detroit, the group realized that there isn’t a resource hub that is easily accessible to clinicians or to pregnant women. A working group of community leaders committed to creating a website resource and communications strategy to get the word out!
Our newest members of TIP Global Health- Maria Adolfo-Morales and Karen Contador- joined us for this wonderfully unique approach to building health equity through the lens of Hope. Maria and Karen are bringing the hope to Watsonville, California in our latest project designed to increase engagement in care among indigenous agricultural workers. We have received Institutional Review Board approval, and focus group discussions among over 100 Mixteco community members will be held next month!
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