MDG Centre

The MDG centre aims to develop a sustainable development strategy that will improve health conditions by removing barriers to healthcare and lowering the heavy disease burden in developing countries. This can be achieved by a package of integrated interventions across sectors. Interventions in health play a key role in achieving all the Millennium Development Goals, with a special focus on the following areas: Community health workers (CHW) The program aims to strengthen the management and supervision of Community Health Workers in ways that demonstrate the effectiveness of a well trained, managed, and paid cadre of CHWs in helping to achieve MDGs 4 and 5. To accomplish this, the program's operations have focused on building the foundational elements (essential tool development, key personnel hiring, training material development & validation, & program implementation training) as well as working an innovative mobile technology application, Child Count+, into community-based management of health. The program's vision of success includes: Strengthen management, supervision, and operations of the Millennium Villages Project CHW program across sites in West and Central Africa, Standardize medical skills, quality of care, and data collection across the sites Improve health outcomes at low cost, and Provide national policy recommendations to professionalize CHWs and integrate them formally into the health workforce based on findings. The CHW program forms an integral part of delivery of health care in the MVs. Through their interactions with household members and healthcare professionals in clinics, CHWs facilitate access to healthcare services for community members. By promoting healthy behavior, providing point of service care when appropriate, and directing referrals to the clinic or district hospital, the MVP CHW forms an important link between households and the healthcare system. The MVP has strong ties with Ministries of Health in the countries where it works and is actively working to extend the CHW model to national scale. The CHW project has a strong operational research component, and implementation and outcomes will be closely monitored to both understand the effects of the project as well as obtain information about needs for correction and project adjustment. This is essential to scale-up the initiative as well to push for appropriate policy changes.