capacity building, m-health, mobile apps
Sankofa mHealth Innovation Brings PTSD Support to War-Impacted Communities
Monrovia. 3 May 2017 – Second Chance Africa and Code Innovation announce our partnership on the Sankofa project to create a mobile application of an innovative clinical curriculum that helps people recover from trauma in war-impacted communities.
The mHealth curriculum pioneered by Second Chance Africa will be used by the organization's cohort of mental health facilitators, half of whom are graduates of the program. Since 2008, they have reached more than 7,000 war-impacted Africans on a shoestring, crowdfunded budget. Participants in one of their clinical outreach projects report a 65% reduction in the debilitating symptoms of trauma like intrusive memories, hyper-arousal, and avoidant behavior, a difference that allows them to return to a more stable life in their families and communities.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma and extreme stress are common outcomes of war and debilitate a person's ability to function in society. In West Africa, the recent Ebola outbreak worsened existing war-related PTSD, compounding long-lasting community mental health issues that remain unattended. In post-conflict areas, trauma often becomes a silent epidemic and while some people get better with time, many do not.
In some areas, rates of PTSD diagnosis are close to 100% based on the nature and severity of events, and trauma symptoms have been documented in refugee groups decades after traumatic exposure. PTSD may heighten the risk for poverty, aggravating the consequences of war and conflict.
"Approximately 17.6 million people are currently impacted by war and conflict across East, West and Central Africa," says Second Chance Africa founder and Executive Director Jana V. Pinto. "Yet despite the clear need, trauma relief is not yet a humanitarian priority, as current efforts are expensive and there is no evidence base available to guide treatment choice. We urgently need more scientific research to develop best practices around trauma relief interventions in war-impacted communities."
"While it may seem secondary to investments in maternal health or child survival, research has shown that communities with a high prevalence of trauma struggle to progress economically," says Elie Calhoun, Director of Code Innovation. "Trauma becomes a piece of the poverty trap and needs to be addressed before war-impacted communities can make lasting social and economic progress."
"The Sankofa mHealth app is designed as a tool for civilians and community health workers to lead local trauma relief groups independently and without prior training or experience," says Calhoun "The 10-hour protocol directly addresses major PTSD symptoms without one-on-one psychotherapy or drug interventions. Digitizing this model on a free mobile app makes the approach accessible to health systems and organizations all over the world. It is a truly game-changing model."
"Although feature phone handsets still significantly outnumber smart phones in Africa, we expect to see a gradual shift to smartphones as they become increasingly available and affordable. Because the Sankofa mobile app is designed to be used by one facilitator working with many groups over time, the program model leverages what is still a relatively rare technology to harness its impact."
Field testing of the digital tool will begin in June in Northern Uganda with South Sudanese refugees fleeing current conflict, and in Monrovia, Liberia with a core team of Second Chance Africa facilitators who have been with the organization since its inception in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana in 2008. As early recipients of the intervention, the facilitators are a testament to the transformative potential of the Second Chance Africa model and have dedicated themselves to ensuring that others in their country receive the same life-changing services.
The Sankofa digital tool will help them and other heroes in the battle against trauma to reach more people and help more people impacted by war regain their lives.
Sankofa is crowdfunding to cover its program costs: https://www.razoo.com/story/Sankofa2017
For more information about the Sankofa project, visit http://secondchanceafrica.org/sankofa
Second Chance Africa After six years delivering hands-on clinical services, Second Chance Africa's team of scientists and health workers now focus on rigorous research and development of innovative, scalable and culturally-adapted intervention tools to advance trauma relief for African communities impacted by war. For more information, visit http://www.secondchanceafrica.org.
Code Innovation's team of ICT4D experts specialize in helping high-impact development solutions go to scale. Our projects have been supported by UNICEF, the UK Department for International Development and major philanthropic foundations. For more information, visit http://www.codeinnovation.com.
Jana V. Pinto, Executive Director, Second Chance Africa, jana@secondchanceafrica.org
Elie Calhoun, Director of Operations, Code Innovation, elie@codeinnovation.com
Tagged: capacity building, community based mental health, ICT4D, mHealth, mobile apps, PTSD, trauma
capacity building, m-health, mobile apps, open source
Version 1.0 of Curriculum for our Digital Resource for Rape Crisis Counselors
A year ago at Code Innovation, we started a crowdfunding journey to create a digital resource for sexual assault survivors who seek medical care and the volunteer advocates who support them. With the support of rape crisis centers across the United States and the US Department of Justice, we have created a concise, four-part curriculum to guide volunteer advocates through a training primer in how to advocate for rape survivors in health centers in different contexts and communities around the world.
This digital intervention guides volunteer advocates on how to offer psychosocial support and medical advocacy, which empowers a rape survivor with the agency to make their own health decisions on the road to healing.
Research shows that rape survivors who have an advocate in the emergency room are significantly less likely to experience post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression.
We also share this video to thank all of our crowdfunding supporters and also the Imago Dei Fund for creating the seed investment for this global digital resource.
Tagged: ICT4D, mobile app, rape crisis counseling, sexual assault response
capacity building, In the media, m-health, mobile apps, open source, tech4dev, Technology for Education
PRESS RELEASE: Code Innovation Launches a Crowdfunding Campaign for Rape Crisis Counseling App to Help Survivors Get Medical Care
Indonesia, 14 February 2016 - To celebrate V-Day today, a global day of action to end violence against women, Code Innovation launched our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to build a Rape Crisis Counseling mobile app. The resource will digitize the training that rape crisis counselors receive to become volunteer emergency room advocates for sexual violence survivors. A coalition of U.S. rape crisis centers, gender-based violence experts and women's rights defenders and non-profits are partnering with Code to adapt and create the content so that it's relevant and applicable for the international community. A network of experts and non-profits eager to use the free, Creative Commons resource in their own communities are ready to translate the content into Arabic, Farsi, French and Spanish. One of the crowdfunding campaign's perks is to allow a supporter to determine which language we add next.
"One in five women will be raped in her lifetime. That's more than 700 million women and girls. We're launching the campaign on V-Day to join our efforts with the global day of action to end violence against women. The Rape Crisis Counseling app will put advocacy resources directly into the hands of rape survivors, their family and friends, and would-be volunteers. Anyone who wants to be of service to survivors of sexual violence should have access to the information and training resources they need, wherever they are in the world," says Elie Calhoun, a Principal at Code Innovation.
Since the 1970's, rape crisis centers have provided advocacy and support services to survivors of sexual violence in their local communities. These non-profits train networks of volunteers to become Rape Crisis Counselors, who accompany sexual violence survivors through the process of getting life-saving emergency medical care, including services to prevent pregnancy, HIV and sexually-transmitted infections.
"Even in industrialized countries with well-resourced hospitals, a rape survivor isn't guaranteed to receive the medical care they need," says Calhoun. "In any context, health care providers can let their cultural beliefs and personal opinions about rape and sexual violence interfere. Even in the U.S., there are numerous cases of doctors and nurses being unwilling to provide full emergency services. This is why Rape Crisis Counselors are so important."
"In other countries, health systems may be under-resourced and health care providers may be unaware or unable to provide a survivor with the services they need. In those cases, it's up to the survivor and whoever accompanies her to the health center to understand and advocate for her needs. Right now, there's no mobile resource that helps them do that," says Calhoun.
Smartphone ownership and adoption is growing rapidly around the world. According to GSMA Intelligence's most recent Global Inclusion report, "an additional 1.6 billion citizens worldwide will become mobile internet users over the next six years, bringing the total number of 3.8 billion, or around half of the world's expected population in 2020."
"We see smartphones as an essential tool to empower rape survivors, their family and friends, and the wider community to help ensure that survivors get the emergency health care they need," says Calhoun. "Even if just one person in a community is able to access the Rape Crisis Counseling app in their language, they can share about the resources and help to educate others."
#rapecrisiscounseling
For updates, visit: http://codeinnovation.com/blog/
Code Innovation digitizes and scales programs that help vulnerable populations. We create educational materials and social innovations that strengthen communities and enable them to lift themselves out of poverty. We've had projects in more than a dozen countries and specialize in challenging, low income environments. For more information about our work, visit http://www.codeinnovation.com.
Tagged: Code Innovation, crowdfunding, gender-based violence, humanitarian aid, international development, m-health, mental health, psychosocial support, rape crisis counseling, rape survivors, sexual assault, violence against women
General, m-health, mobile apps, open source, tech4dev
Co-Creating a Free Rape Crisis Counseling App
An estimated one in three women is sexually assaulted over her lifetime. If the woman (or girl) is able to access emergency medical assistance with the support of a rape crisis counselor advocate, the chances of her healing increase exponentially. Without appropriate medical or psychological care, she is more likely to suffer from physical, mental and emotional after-effects that prolong her suffering and impact not just her own quality of life and productivity, but that of her family and community.
For over 40 years, rape crisis centers around the world have provided emergency room advocacy for survivors of sexual violence, ensuring that they receive appropriate treatment and care to begin the healing process. However, in low-resource environments and socio-cultural contexts where the seriousness sexual assault is minimized, survivors are often confronted with hostile or uninformed health care workers who may be unwilling or unable to provide the basic emergency services that help prevent pregnancy, STIs and HIV.
In these cases, which are by far the global majority of rape cases, a rape crisis advocate would make a significant difference in the survivor's ability to secure adequate care while helping to mitigate the incidence of trauma.
Within the best medical systems, local rape crisis centers offer face-to-face training that prepares new crisis counselors for volunteer service in local hospitals. But in many countries and cities, these trainings are not available and advocates are not present.
We are digitizing the training curriculum of the Pittsburgh Action against Rape coalition and other U.S. rape crisis centers to create a free Rape Crisis Counseling mobile app that will make it easier for women around the world to get the support they require. The app will be released into the Creative Commons and include:
M-learning Rape Crisis Counselor training material for anyone interested in learning the skills to be of volunteer service in their community;
In-hand resources (a script, essentially) that enable a colleague, family member or friend to advocate for a survivor of sexual assault to emergency medical services;
In-hand resources for a survivor herself, so that women without access to advocates can be as empowered as possible on their own.
We are partnering with U.S. rape crisis centers and coalitions to transform their rape crisis counseling training course into an m-learning resource. We also have approval from the U.S. Department of Justice to adapt and use their training resources.
Women's rights associations and human rights defenders from around the world, as well as a network of aid worker survivors of sexual assault, will review the content for its appropriateness in a variety of challenging use cases and environments.
To date, no mobile resources exist that support survivors and their advocates as they access what can be life-saving medical care. We're going to change that.
On Sunday 14 February, a global day of action to end violence against women, we're launching a crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds to develop and translate the first Rape Crisis Counseling app for Android and iOS.
Join us in supporting rape survivors around the world on their road to recovery.
To get involved, email Elie Calhoun at elie@codeinnovation.com.
Tagged: app, code innovation- sexual assault, crowdfunding, gender-based violence, m-learning, mental health, mHealth, partnerships, rape crisis counseling, sexual assault, sexual violence
capacity building, m-health, mobile apps, mobile workforce devel..., tech4dev
mHealth for Trauma Intervention Post-Ebola
Our mHealth trauma project is taking one of the most impressive mental health innovations we've seen to scale, digitizing the approach pioneered by Second Chance Africa in post-conflict Monrovia and reaching freshly traumatized communities in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. Our one-pager outlining the project, for which we're actively seeking impact investors, is here. We're pushing the envelope in making low-cost trauma services easily available to low-resource populations where, in most cases, the national health system is still struggling to meet basic needs.
The thousands of Liberians who have graduated from Second Chance Africa's 8-week program report a 60% decrease in their trauma symptoms -- things like panic attacks, hand tremors and hyperventilation -- and that they're able to return to normal lives thanks to the program. By taking the approach mobile for community health workers, we're helping to network mental health for trauma into the package of basic services.
Now that we're teaching at Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program for the summer, we're feeling challenged to take things a step further. At the moment, we're relying on impact investors for the seed funding that will enable us to create the mobile app for community health workers and test it with implementing partners in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gaza and Rwanda.
Facilitators who run the app-based program will have, at the end of the 8 weeks, a cohesive and motivated group, ready to join the economy and begin to build their lives back. What if we could reach those people with entrepreneurial training, for those that want it, and vocational training that creates revenue streams to support the project's scale?
We're in the early stages of trying to bring in a social business component to our mHealth trauma app, . After all, while we need seed funding to get this started, we don't want to create a system that constantly needs external funding. Lucky for us, Singularity University is now partners with Yunus Social Business, so we've got some of the best support and thinking on this available.
If you'd like to learn more about how your impact investing could improve the lives of people affected by emergencies and disasters, including Ebola, get in touch (info@codeinnovation.com) to continue the conversation.
Tagged: Code Innovation, community health, complex trauma, extreme stress, ICT4D, mental health, mHealth, mobile app, open source, PTSD, tech4dev, trauma
m-health, mobile apps, tech4dev
Community Mental Health
The Washington Post recently profiled Chris Blattman's research into the economic and security benefits of therapy for at-risk youth in Monrovia, Liberia in "Jobs and jail might not keep young men out of crime, but how about therapy?". The gatekeepers of the psychiatric industry are losing power and a much-needed variety of healing will quickly become accessible on a global scale.
It bodes well for individuals, families and communities everywhere that psycho-social services are starting to be democratized. When people assumed that therapy or counseling required one-on-one time with a highly trained specialist or a regular supply of expensive proprietary drugs, emotional support was effectively a luxury (and, indeed, it has been routinely satirized as such with bored and wealthy TV characters gobbling pills from their indulgent therapists).
Bold new approaches to therapy are delivering powerful results for incredibly low costs, indicating that psychosocial services may soon become available to the hundreds of millions of people struggling with the effects of trauma.
Our partners, Second Chance Africa, pioneered a group therapy approach in Monrovia for ex-combatants that ran over five years, eliminating symptoms of trauma in 60% of the people who went through the program. We're currently looking for funding to help digitize the curriculum that made this possible and to create an open source mobile resource for Community Health Workers to facilitate group therapy sessions of this variety.
We've got a rigorous, clinical monitoring and evaluation protocol lined up that leverages the expertise of PHD candidate Jana Pinto, who studies at the Brain and Mind Research Institute at the Sydney Medical School, at the University of Sydney. And we'll be testing the approach simultaneously with culturally diverse members of the refugee community in Sydney to gauge the effectiveness of our content and method for a wider audience.
If you're interested to help make this happen, contact us at info@codeinnovation.com.
Tagged: Code Innovation, community health, community health workers, community mental health, ebola, Ebola psychosocial support, humanitarian disaster, ICT4D, Liberia, m-health, mental health, post-conflict, psycosocial support, PTSD, stress, trauma, West Africa