Projects to identify infants exposed to Zika virus in Colombia, to improve maternal health in rural communities of the Peruvian Amazon, and to improve food safety and nutrition in rural Colombian communities were among the winners of the 2019 Social Innovation in Health Initiative awards announced by the Pan American Health Organization on Universal Health Day (12 December).
The SIHI hub for Latin America and the Caribbean launched in June 2019 a crowdsourcing call to identify social innovations in the Andean region (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela). The call for innovations implemented the SIHI selection standards and processes and worked with an external international panel of ten prominent experts in innovations for health, entrepreneurship and implementation research that assessed 30 applications from all five countries.
In Colombia, the National Institute of Health won for its intensified surveillance programme for Zika virus infection in infants, which worked closely with families and led to new public policies that benefit infants who were exposed to Zika by expanding health access and benefits.
In Peru, a rural maternal health programme in the Peruvian Amazon, Mamás del Río, or Mothers of the River, won for its impact in building local capacity with community health workers to improve maternal and neonatal health in 84 riverside communities in the province of Loreto.
In the rural community of Sumapaz in Colombia, an initiative to advance food safety and nutrition by improving food production practices won for its success in reducing malnutrition and improving health statistics using good agricultural practices.
Full details on the winners are available here.
In September, the winners joined other innovators, stakeholders and former SIHI winners at two workshops in Cali, Colombia, where the design thinking methodology was used to explore transfer, scalability and sustainability of innovations. These workshops catalyzed the establishment of the Latin American and Caribbean Alliance on Social Innovation for Health (ALACISS).
SIHI is supported by TDR, and additional funding is provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). SIHI in Latin America and the Caribbean is coordinated collaboratively by the Centro Internacional de Entrenamiento e Investigaciones Medicas (CIDEIM) and the Pan American Health Organization, in alliance with Universidad Icesi.