Staff development and access to information improve health outcomes. Yet staff working in resource-poor countries encounter many constraints to gaining new skills and sharing information.
Health managers in facilities or programs may not have learned leadership skills to mobilize others to make needed changes. Frequently, health care providers are not trained to treat children. They may improvise treatment doses or avoid offering health care to children. But face-to-face training for providers in, for example, the integrated management of childhood illness can be expensive.
MSH is creating new, more cost-effective methods for developing staff capabilities and for exchanging information. Through its blended learning programs, MSH has combined electronic communications and ongoing coaching with face-to-face learning. Using blended learning, MSH has trained teams of health providers and managers to lead initiatives that address ongoing health care challenges.
For example, through participation in a Virtual Leadership Development Program, team members from World Vision India-Pragati Child Survival clarified their roles in reducing childhood illness. Their staff now bring more vaccines to remote areas and improve the counseling skills of the auxiliary nurse midwives. More community health workers routinely complete client registers. Another team from Family Health International Malawi was able to integrate home-based care with its orphans and vulnerable children program.
Such innovative learning methods are particularly strong at stimulating collaborative action by teams from all organizational levels. Simultaneously, multiple sites can improve their abilities to plan operations and implement their plans. As a result, best practices can rapidly spread. These methods can be especially useful in fragile states or remote areas where trainers cannot provide onsite training.
MSH is also helping to develop technological means for staff to share information, whether or not computers are available. In Senegal, MSH is training coordinators to use personal data assistants (PDAs) or “palm pilots” in a USAID-funded maternal health and family planning program.
The PDAs make it easier for the coordinators to collect data and communicate information to decision makers. Documenting conditions of local health centers and sharing the information with municipal decision makers have led to renovations of maternity wings. Such changes encourage women to deliver in health facilities, rather than at home without assistance from trained health workers.
MSH is assisting a number of teams from MOHs and programs to address specific health challenges through Virtual Leadership Development Programs.
Health managers in facilities or programs may not have learned leadership skills to mobilize others to make needed changes. Frequently, health care providers are not trained to treat children. They may improvise treatment doses or avoid offering health care to children. But face-to-face training for providers in, for example, the integrated management of childhood illness can be expensive.
MSH is creating new, more cost-effective methods for developing staff capabilities and for exchanging information. Through its blended learning programs, MSH has combined electronic communications and ongoing coaching with face-to-face learning. Using blended learning, MSH has trained teams of health providers and managers to lead initiatives that address ongoing health care challenges.
For example, through participation in a Virtual Leadership Development Program, team members from World Vision India-Pragati Child Survival clarified their roles in reducing childhood illness. Their staff now bring more vaccines to remote areas and improve the counseling skills of the auxiliary nurse midwives. More community health workers routinely complete client registers. Another team from Family Health International Malawi was able to integrate home-based care with its orphans and vulnerable children program.
Such innovative learning methods are particularly strong at stimulating collaborative action by teams from all organizational levels. Simultaneously, multiple sites can improve their abilities to plan operations and implement their plans. As a result, best practices can rapidly spread. These methods can be especially useful in fragile states or remote areas where trainers cannot provide onsite training.
MSH is also helping to develop technological means for staff to share information, whether or not computers are available. In Senegal, MSH is training coordinators to use personal data assistants (PDAs) or “palm pilots” in a USAID-funded maternal health and family planning program.
The PDAs make it easier for the coordinators to collect data and communicate information to decision makers. Documenting conditions of local health centers and sharing the information with municipal decision makers have led to renovations of maternity wings. Such changes encourage women to deliver in health facilities, rather than at home without assistance from trained health workers.
MSH is assisting a number of teams from MOHs and programs to address specific health challenges through Virtual Leadership Development Programs.