Recorded presentation

Rosario Vargas, MBA, CARE Peru (Cajamarca Office), Apartado Postal 11-0628, Lima, Lima 11, Peru, (5176) 823284, arcosg@caj.care.org.pe and Gloria Arcos, RM, MPH, CARE PERU, Cajamarca Office, PO Box 11628, Lima, Peru, Lima, Lima 11, Peru.

One of the core strategies that the CARE Peru Child Survival Program has been implementing to help reduce maternal, perinatal, and child mortality in rural communities in Peru was to promote social networks linked to health networks. For this reason a number of interventions were aimed at fostering community empowerment and greater social responsibility by involving local social stakeholders. This enabled concerted planning and the creation of alliances and partnership mechanisms among this network of stakeholders, with the priority on the well-being of their communities and, in particular, vulnerable groups, such as mothers and children. As a result it was possible to improve the use of resources in a concerted manner, enabling the community to take charge of its own development.

A number of indications of the positive contributions made by this strategy: 1) organized communities propose Maternal and Child Health and Basic Sanitation activities for inclusion in their Action Plans (from 0% to 55% of communities), which are taken into account by municipalities in the participatory community budget planning process designed to target community priorities. 2) The Community Health Surveillance System is operational thanks to the participation of community authorities in helping to improve coverage of the of the population census (from 0 % to 75%), improve Emergency Evacuation mechanisms (69% of communities with operational brigades), which has brought an increase, for example, in the detection of acute respiratory infections (48.44%) thanks to the timely diagnosis and referral of patie.

Learning Objectives:

• a. To analyze community responsibility in health care, as well as the community’s organizational and management capacity in its relations with intersectoral partners the Ministry of Health (MoH) and Local Municipalities.
• b. To describe a successful experience in community-based health surveillance system articulated in a social network linking organized rural communities, the Ministry of Health, Municipalities and Organizations of Community Health Agents (CHA) who make health a priority area of development.
• c. To describe innovations played by Community Health Agents (CHA) under CARE Project through Health Promotion and prevention.
• d. To analyze the value of empowered communities to become agents for advocacy for health care in rural communities.

Keywords: Community-Oriented Primary Care, Advocacy

Related Web page: www.care.org.pe

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: CARE PERU
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

Recorded presentation