September 18, 2023 (New York, NY) – Last Mile Health and Integrate Health, two leading international organizations, have teamed up to combat a pervasive problem: the unpaid labor of women in Africa’s community health workforce.
Their 2023 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action, which was featured on the plenary stage at the CGI 2023 Meeting today, articulates their plans to work with African ministries of health to strengthen and sustain gender-responsive community health worker programs across four countries, as well as to develop and disseminate lessons learned to accelerate similar efforts across the continent.
Last Mile Health and Integrate Health are “committing to improving primary care for millions of people… their programs to support and strengthen gender-responsive community healthcare will promote better health outcomes and reduce preventable deaths,” said Chelsea Clinton, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation.
The organizations will strengthen gender mainstreaming efforts across community health programming in Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, and Togo, ultimately strengthening the delivery of primary care for an estimated 5.8 million people. In partnership with ministries of health, the organizations will identify and reduce barriers to increase the number of paid, professional community health workers who identify as women employed by national programs; strengthen national policy; and tailor gender-responsive programming to enable the delivery of quality care to women and children. Then, Last Mile Health and Integrate Health will capture and disseminate lessons learned and best practices to accelerate this work globally and contribute to the growing evidence base.
The organizations are grateful for the partnership of Co-Impact, CRI Foundation, Dovetail Impact Foundation, the Government of Liberia, the Skoll Foundation, and Wagner Foundation in this commitment.
To ensure national health systems can respond to the urgent crises our world faces today—including pandemics and climate change—we must dismantle gendered barriers that prevent women from becoming paid, professional community health workers and deny them the quality healthcare they deserve.
About the Clinton Global Initiative
Founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative is a community of doers representing a broad cross section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. Through CGI’s unique model, more than 9,000 organizations have launched more than 3,900 Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable projects and programs.