Last Mile Health
MLC Vanguard | Created by Last Mile Health
Last Mile Health partners with governments to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain high-quality community health systems by empowering teams of community-based health workers to bring life-saving healthcare to remote communities.
12,100,000 Lives Impacted
Despite decades of medical and technological progress, half of the world’s 7.3 billion people—including one billion people living in remote communities—lives without access to essential health services. Compounding this crisis is a massive shortage of health workers, which is forecast to grow to a gap of 18 million by 2030. If these gaps are not addressed, more than 8.9 million people could continue to die each year from diseases that can be prevented or treated.
Last Mile Health is partnering with the Liberian Ministry of Health to fully scale and sustain the National Community Health Assistant Program, which will deploy over 4,000 community and frontline health workers by the year 2021 to serve a population of 1.2 million. Building on a decade of experience working with the Liberia Ministry of Health, Last Mile Health has developed a five-step model to recruit, train, manage, supply, and incentivize high-performing community and frontline health worker teams to provide lifesaving healthcare to their neighbors.
As of May 2019, the Government of Liberia and its partners had hired, trained, and equipped more than 3,300 community and frontline health workers across 14 of 15 total counties. They have carried out more than 1.6 million home visits; treated and/or screened 630,000 childhood cases of pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea, or malnutrition; supported 160,000 pregnancy visits; and identified approximately 3,900 potential epidemic events in their Communities. Over more than a decade of partnership with Liberia’s Ministry of Health, we have seen the transformative impact that occurs when governments are supported to design, scale, strengthen, and sustain high-quality community health systems that empower teams of community and frontline health workers to deliver essential primary care services to their communities. We look forward to continuing to leverage lessons learned in Liberia to contribute to the global movement to ensure access to quality, community-based primary health services.
The Innovation
Globally, recent advances towards health equity have, by and large, failed to reach remote areas where – owing to poor infrastructure, low population densities, and limited resources – mortality remains highest, access to quality health care the most limited, and progress takes the longest to reach. Despite these gaps, evidence suggests that by training community and frontline health workers in just 30 evidence-based, lifesaving practices and expanding their reach to millions of rural children and families in the 73 highest burden countries, the world can save 30 million lives by 2030. LMH is currently working alongside Liberia’s Ministry of Health to design, implement, and institutionalize a groundbreaking community health workforce initiative, the National Community Health Assistant Program. Building on a decade of experience working with the Liberia Ministry of Health, LMH has developed a five-step model to recruit, train, manage, supply, and incentivize high-performing community and frontline health worker teams to provide lifesaving healthcare to their neighbors. When governments are supported to achieve these indicators, the result is a national community health workforce that can drive transformative increases in the coverage of essential primary healthcare services that save lives in the world’s most remote communities.
Implemented in
Ethiopia, Malawi, Liberia, Uganda
Get in touch
Last Mile Health HQ
About Last Mile Health
Last Mile Health saves lives in the world’s most remote communities by partnering with governments to design, strengthen, scale, and advocate for high-quality community health systems that empower teams of community and frontline health workers to deliver essential primary care services–including prenatal services, vaccinations, care for non-communicable diseases, and HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria treatment– to their communities.
