For nearly 40 years, Jhpiego has been a leader in strengthening global health service delivery and technical capacity in developing countries, reaching 100 nations in the process. Recognizing the need to accelerate the development, delivery and impact at scale of new approaches to priority global health problems, Jhpiego decided to act by formally creating the Innovations Program.

The overarching program goal is to mobilize Jhpiego’s global presence and technical leadership to work with partners in catalyzing and bringing to scale process (practice and service delivery) and technology-based innovations for maximum global health impact.

Objectives

• Bring transformational change to the quality and scale of health care services at the community and population levels
• Identify or create technology- or practice-based solutions to priority global health needs, either emerging or persistent
• Design solutions that are extremely affordable, evidence-based, and developed collaboratively and responsibly to enable local buy-in and implementation at scale
• Effectively link emerging technologies with successful delivery strategies at scale
• Build on assets and expertise, both local and global
• Foster innovation and leadership within Jhpiego and with partners worldwide

Initiatives

• The award-winning Antenatal Care Screening Kit is a low-cost, intuitive self-test platform to provide important tests for maternal health conditions, such as proteinuria (pre-eclampsia/eclampsia), and is designed for point-of-care at household, community and facility.
• A high blood pressure detection device is highly affordable, robust and easy to use in peripheral level health care settings or communities, bringing more affordable and effective care closer to women and families.
• An electronic, hand-hand “ePartogram,” based on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) paper partogram, is a decision-making support tool designed for health care providers to monitor labor more easily and respond immediately to problems experienced by the mother or unborn child during labor.

• Community-Based Innovations for Prevention of Postpartum Hemorrhage (PPH). Jhpiego has been a global pioneer in demonstrating the effectiveness of innovative, community-based interventions to distribute misoprostol—a safe, effective, relatively low-cost drug that can be used to prevent postpartum hemorrhage.
• Pre-Service and In-Service Training. Jhpiego works with health ministries around the world to apply innovative learning approaches for the development of pre-service and in-service training protocols in multiple technical areas, reaching more than 400 institutions and strengthening more than 1,725 health care facilities to function as clinical training sites.
• Community-Clinic Innovation Platform. Partnership between the community and the clinic can be an “innovation incubator” for locally derived solutions. For example, “expert patients,” who sensitize doctors, nurses and midwives about how to deliver care most effectively, can have a powerful, positive effect on service provision.

• Accelerating nationwide introduction of lifesaving approaches: Jhpiego has become an important partner to international agencies and governments seeking to expand effective pilot models to national scale. In its novel HIV prevention work, Jhpiego has pioneered effective and efficient service delivery approaches to male circumcision—a practice that reduces female-to-male transmission of HIV by approximately 60%—and important, innovative approaches to HIV counseling and testing. To make these approaches widely available, Jhpiego teamed with WHO, UNAIDS, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and ministry partners throughout Africa to improve national guidelines, shape policies and train providers on new approaches.
• Establishing new global standards of practice: Jhpiego works closely with WHO, international medical associations and other partners to ensure that international standards of practice are shaped by the latest evidence and experience in the field. Jhpiego has led guidelines development and established new consensus for action, policies, programs and clinical education. As a result of our leadership in the Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention and contributions to new international guidelines, the Jhpiego single visit approach (SVA) is now being used in the public sector in more than 40 developing countries.
• Improving health system effectiveness: Jhpiego’s Standards-Based Management and Recognition (SBM-R) is a performance and quality improvement approach designed by Jhpiego technical experts from Peru and Brazil. SBM-R has dramatically improved the quality and coverage of health services and accessibility in more than 36 countries, with 11 countries adopting the approach at a national level.

Partnering with the Jhpiego Innovations Program

We actively seek to collaborate with technology and practice innovators to design, develop and advance scalable solutions to global health needs. Please contact us at info@jhpiego.net or by phone at 410.537.1800.