This month, GBCHealth features case studies of the eight winning programs in our 2013 Business Action on Health Awards. The in-depth look at these initiatives provides a showcase of the world’s best corporate-supported programs addressing global health needs.
Every year, GBCHealth presents the awards at our annual conference to recognize the achievements of business in tackling the world’s most pressing health issues.
The 2013 winning programs represent innovative work from Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, GlaxoSmithKline, Hewlett-Packard Company, Levi Strauss & Co., Novartis, ORTEC, Pfizer and Procter & Gamble. They include a for-profit social business that increases access to medicines for India’s rural poor, a network of roadside health centers in refurbished shipping containers that targets truck drivers along southern Africa’s major transportation routes, and a project that provides clean water and sanitation to 185,000 community members in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In featuring the case studies of the 2013 winning programs, GBCHealth celebrates and congratulates our winning companies for their exemplary, high-impact work. Please explore the case studies below to learn about what makes a best-in-class corporate health program.
We also invite you to start planning your own entry for the 2014 Business Action on Health Awards. Applications open in September,but it’s never too early to start. This year, we received applications from across the globe—including Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, Turkey, China, Nigeria, Guatemala and Kenya—and from organizations as diverse as small tech startups and multinational brands. So wherever and whatever your program targets, we hope you will apply.
ORTEC partnered with North Star Alliance to operate and maintain a network of Roadside Wellness Centers (RWCs) along Africa’s major transport routes, providing health services to truck drivers and corridor communities. Each RWC is a shipping container converted into a clinic, with prevention programs run by a peer educator on the left side and treatment services run by a clinician on the right side. ORTEC developed the Corridor Medical Transfer System to securely store, exchange and monitor patient-specific data across RWCs, enabling continuity of care and real-time monitoring of epidemiological trends at local, national and regional levels. In 2012, 29 RWCs operating in 13 African countries provided over 200,000 individuals with counseling, testing and treatment services for HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, malaria and general health needs.
Levi Strauss & Co.’s (LS&Co.) Employee HIV/AIDS Program provides HIV/AIDS education and services for 6,800 retail employees in LS&Co.’s 600 stores in 26 countries – a group of workers that is young, mobile, technologically savvy and at risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS. The program features trainings, targeted communications (e.g. interactive webcasts, quizzes and videos) and education sessions held by store managers. Where private or national health coverage is inadequate, LS&Co. offers employees its own HIV/AIDS benefits plan. Further, LS&Co. has partnered with Mercer LLC to negotiate the inclusion of HIV/AIDS-related conditions with local insurers in several countries, benefiting populations far beyond Levi’s employees and demonstrating LS&Co.’s commitment to universal access.
Winning with Wellness aims to enhance the physical health, emotional wellbeing and financial skills of Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) global workforce. Started in 2010, it has since expanded to 35 countries, reaching 290,000 employees – over 90 percent of HP’s global workforce. HP has tailored the program’s 200+ initiatives to local cultures, infrastructures and demographics, allowing each country to determine the relevant activities for its employee population. The program includes an employee website, HP Wellness Central, which offers tools and resources for smoking cessation, physical activity, nutrition and stress reduction. A companion website, HP Finance Central, helps employees make more informed financial decisions.
Every year, more children fall ill and die from diarrhea caused by unclean water than from HIV/AIDS and malaria combined. In 2004, Procter & Gamble (P&G) created the not-for-profit P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program to raise awareness about the global clean drinking water crisis and to reduce child diarrhea death and illness with P&G water purification packets. Each packet contains a powdered mixture that quickly removes pathogenic micro-organisms, making water safe to drink. Since 2004, the program has provided over 5.5 billion liters of clean drinking water in over 65 countries, averting more than 200 million days of diarrhea and saving an estimated 29,000 lives.
In partnership with FHI 360, GlaxoSmithKline implemented its Community-based Malaria Program, mobilizing communities in two districts of Ghana to improve malaria prevention and treatment. The program trained community health workers to identify early signs of malaria and to promote health-seeking behaviors, and worked with community-based groups such as Mothers against Malaria clubs to conduct door-to-door advocacy campaigns. Licensed Chemical Sellers (LCSs) – often the first port of call for rural populations seeking healthcare – were trained to identify and refer serious malaria cases, and the program improved availability of malaria treatment drugs from 39.1 percent to over 90 percent among trained LCSs. The program also increased health-seeking behaviors and hospital attendance and distributed 10,000 mosquito nets to pregnant women and children under 5.
Arogya Parivar, meaning “Healthy Family” in Hindi, is a for-profit social business developed by Novartis in 2007 that adapts a market-based approach to improve healthcare access for India’s rural poor. The four major program components are: awareness, accessibility, affordability and adaptability. Novartis trained health educators to teach disease prevention and awareness. In 2012, they held 87,000 health education meetings attended by 2.5 million villagers. Novartis also supplies medicines to over 28,000 pharmacies and created a network of 90 medical distributors inside villages who are supplied products directly from company warehouses. Some over-the-counter treatments are sold in smaller doses in order to be more affordable for local daily-wage earners.
About 2 million new cancer cases and 1.5 million deaths from cancer are reported each year in China. Nationwide, 350 million people smoke tobacco and each year one million people die from smoking-related diseases. In response, Pfizer China and the Pfizer Foundation created the Advancing Cancer and Tobacco Control in China program, working with the government, healthcare professionals and other organizations to advance tobacco and cancer control. So far, the program has provided 328,000 Shanghai residents with cancer prevention education; trained over 2,700 medical professionals in cancer and tobacco control best practices; and provided comprehensive care to nearly 40,000 cancer patients through 10 newly-built community cancer care centers.
The Tenke Fungurume Mining Commitment for Clean Water and Environmental Sanitation program is a partnership among Tenke Fungurume Mining and local, provincial and national organizations to improve health for 185,000 community members in the Fungurume Health Zone, Katanga Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The program consists of five complementary projects that together address: clean water distribution; hygiene and sanitation; improving river drainage to reduce cases of malaria and cholera; and building local capacity to allow for long-term community ownership of the project. Since 2009, 94 wells have been built, providing an estimated 64 rural villages with access to clean water. Diarrheal episodes have been significantly decreased and there have been no reports of cholera outbreaks.
GBCHealth also honored three visionaries in global health at its May 2013 Conference: Dr. Christine Kaseba-Sata, First Lady of Zambia, received the Frontline Hero award; Dr. Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, received the Vision and Impact award; and the Business Leadership award went to Pfizer Inc’s Global Health Fellows corporate volunteer program.
