Concern America

SUMMARY: Concern America is an international development and refugee aid organization that works with economically impoverished communities around the world to develop long-term solutions to poverty.

PROBLEM SPACE: “Locally, Concern America (C/A) brings health care to impoverished communities in Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico by training community members, known as Health Promoter Practitioners (HPPs), to provide their own health care services. In materially poor countries with few resources to dedicate to health care, combined with factors that increase barriers such as rural isolation, war, and language/cultural differences, there is little hope that fully-staffed clinics will be built or expanded to meet health care needs. This presumption that one has to be a university-educated medical professional to provide health care excludes billions of people from access to such care. C/A has successfully shown that trained HPPs, many of whom have only 3-6 years of formal education, can successfully treat 80% of the health issues in her/his community. Now, hundreds of thousands of people in isolated communities have primary health care services in their own villages.

Globally, C/A is creating the infrastructure for a significant expansion of the HPP model through the completion of its HPP training Manual in 2016. The Manual, “”How to Teach About Health”” includes 18 teacher guides and HPP student manuals (a three-year course of study), allowing any organization or institution to implement this health care model.”

SOLUTION: Community members in materially impoverished, isolated, and often war-torn communities are trained to provide primary health care services through Concern America’s Health Promoter Practitioner model, bringing high-quality, low-cost comprehensive health care where none exists.

UPDATE: As of October 2017, Concern America teamed up with Hesperian Health Guides, publisher of the world-renowned book Where There Is No Doctor, to distribute our Cómo Enseñar Sobre La Salud (How To Teach Health) books. Concern America’s 24-book series provides multiple levels of training with an instructor’s guide and promoter handbook for each health care topic, making Concern America’s Health Promoter Practitioner model available worldwide.
Additional video: “Why Concern America?”

CONTACT: [email protected]