The Big Push Campaign
You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to understand that basic, accessible healthcare is a human right denied to many of those in the developing world, particularly children. The good news is that we are winning the war against child mortality, as well as being very close to defeating diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
A 2010 TedTalk by Dr. Hans Rosling reframes 10 years of UN data, providing a compelling and enlightening look at the underreported progress we are making against child mortality. Rosling is a world renowned international public health scientist and medical statistician who just this week was named as the winner of 2012′s Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award, “for his outstanding work in analyzing global health care disparities and promoting humane medical equity”. 
Digital technology and social media provides opportunities to reach more people, more quickly around the world with health education, information, diagnoses and treatments. Here’s 5 initiatives striving to turbo charge a rapid end to some of the world’s biggest health problems.
Medic Mobile
1. Medic Mobile
Medic Mobile works with partner organizations that provide high-impact health services in challenging settings. The project’s key areas of focus are:
- Getting People Into Care: Remote Patient Registration and Danger Sign Monitoring;
- Helping People Stay in Care: Notifications for Antenatal Care and Immunizations; and
- Improving the Quality of Care: Stock Monitoring and Data Collection.
Using free and open source software, Medic Mobile claims to have boosted immunization rates by more than 20%, contained disease outbreaks, and made drug stock reporting 4 times cheaper and 134 times faster, which impacts the care of over 600,000 patients.
2. The Big Push
Picture this: A world where no child is born with HIV or where no death is caused by a mosquito bite. As unrealistic as that sounds, in reality, we are much closer to achieving this dream than anyone realizes. But, like every amazing advance made by humankind, this goal needs a Big Push to change the course of history for global health. Initiated by The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, in partnership with The Huffington Post, The Big Push is a campaign to rally support to achieve global health goals that are now within reach. 
Melinda Gates launched this Gates Foundation initiative to eradicate polio. Thanks to childhood vaccines, polio has been reduced by 99% and we are on the threshold of eradicating the second disease in history (after small pox).
4. Shot@Life
The UN Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics launched a mobile app at the Summit that allows parents to track their children’s milestones while raising awareness for the need for life-saving vaccines for children globally. 1.5 million children around the world die each year from a vaccine-preventable disease and Shot@Life is the UN Foundation’s newest campaign that educates, connects, and empowers Americans to champion vaccinations. Vaccines are the most cost-effective way to safeguard the lives of children in developing countries against diseases like polio, diarrhoea, measles and pneumonia.
The new mobile app allows parents and followers of the campaign to capture and share the moments of childhood with stylized photos on Facebook, Twitter, or through email. In partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the app also includes a Milestone Tracker that outlines developmental and health-related indicators that typically occur in a child’s life from birth to age five. The app makes it easy for parents and others to become Shot@Life champions and spread the word about vaccines as one of the most cost-effective ways to save the lives of children in developing countries.
Closer to home and quite frighteningly, this current generation of children will be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents due to the endemic problems of child obesity and reduced physical activity. In less than two generations, physical activity has dropped by 20% in the U.K. and 32% in the U.S. In China, the drop is 45% in less than one generation. Vehicles, machines and technology now do the moving for us. What we do in our leisure time doesn’t come close to making up for what we’ve lost.
Designed to Move urges people to create early positive experiences for children and integrate physical activity into everyday life. If kids are playing hard and having fun, they’ll come back for more. One day, they’ll have hard-playing kids of their own, and the negative cycle will be broken.
As always, participate where you can and if you have any other ideas worth a bit of publicity, let us know!
Tags: developing world, healthcare, Social Media
This post is categorized in: Social Media
