Frontline health workers, technology, maps, and access to care

In 2012 Direct Relief (DR), a CA based medical assistance nonprofit, teamed up with Last Mile Health to launch a community-based expansion of access to pneumonia treatment for children in the district of Konobo in rural Liberia. Last Mile Health is an NGO dedicated to bringing quality healthcare services to the most remote populations of Liberia through an innovative Frontline Health Worker (FHW) program. DR supports Last Mile Health not only by supplying medical support, but also by equipping the FHWs with tools and technology to enhance their programmatic work.

Frontline Health Workers were trained to conduct a baseline survey of the area to estimate prevalence of pneumonia in children and identify barriers to care. This training included proper use of handheld GPS devices. These devices allowed FHWs to track location information for all health survey results and map the rural roads to improve speed and efficiency of health worker outreach. Last Mile Health thus created coordinate locations for all health survey results in 57 villages and created track data that formed the basis of road/path maps built by DR for the previously unmapped rural Liberian district.

These maps were shared with additional stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health. Precisely geo-coded household health survey results are now helping both Last Mile Health and the Ministry to raise questions about health access and health resource allocation. The Konobo maps have become a sort of public-private partnership, helping to guide accurate, efficient and forward-thinking healthcare decisions for rural Liberians.