By The Centre for International Child Health
The Smart Discharges team has entered into a partnership with Malaria Consortium, a non-profit organization working to implement a national Integrated Community Case Management (ICCM) program in Uganda that reports to the Ministry of Health's Community Health Information System (CHIS). Through our partnership, we aim to incorporate the Smart Discharges risk prediction algorithms into the national ICCM program and thereby, the CHIS. This collaboration will close the community linkage to care by identifying vulnerable children at the facility and referring them to a community health worker the CHIS. The CHW is then able to report the results of their community follow-up back to the facility through the CHIS. This program is currently being piloted at 3 health facilities in Buikwe district.
To support the integration and interoperability of the Community Health Information System (CHIS), the Ugandan Ministry of Health's Digital Health Information Department with support from the Smart Discharges team, hosted a stakeholder engagement meeting on September 22nd, 2021. Stakeholders in attendance included BRAC, Living Goods, UNCDF, Malaria Consortium, and UNICEF among others. The purpose of the meeting was to determine the best course of action for integrating the various stakeholder mHealth programs into the CHIS.
The team's manuscript "Out of pocket costs and time/productivity losses for pediatric sepsis in Uganda: A mixed-methods study" was recently published in BMC Health Services Research. This paper outlines the economic burden of sepsis on families during the post-discharge period and revealed that post-hospital sepsis care has massive financial implications on families.