Washington DC, 16 December 2021 (PAHO)-On December 14, as part of Universal Health Day celebrations, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) interviewed four social innovators who developed initiatives that contribute to the improvement of the health of their communities and the strengthening of local health systems during the pandemic of the COVID-19.
These initiatives were selected as winners among 106 eligible proposals, in the framework of the call for social innovations in health in the region, organized by the Node of Social Innovation in Health for Latin America and the Caribbean, an organization coordinated by CIDEIM as a regional TDR training center, PAHO/WHO, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.
The innovators interviewed were Tatchia Puertas, representing the project "The importance of community communication in the fight against COVID-19", a communication campaign to reach vulnerable populations in the municipality of Sorocaba, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Kiran Mohammed, representing the MEDL project, a technology platform developed in Trinidad and Tobago to help patients manage their medication, save time and costs and improve accessibility. Pablo Montoya, from Colombia, representing the project "El Canto del Tucán: Radio, health and pedagogy in the Colombian Amazon", a knowledge exchange program through radio, built jointly with indigenous organizations; and Daniela Ochaíta, representing the project "Socio-cultural barriers and risk mitigation facilitators of Covid-19 when testing a community surveillance and response system within an inclusive health care model", a mobile call center for the rural municipality of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala, for the exclusive use of the local indigenous population (Maya Tzutujil).
The interview is available on PAHO social media channels: Facebook, YouTube y Twitter.
