Join IntraHealth at the American Public Health Association Conference

IntraHealth will offer several presentations at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA’s) 137th Annual Meeting and Exposition, November 7-11.  The conference—which attracts 13,000 medical professionals, researchers, health specialists, and educators—will take place at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. APHA's conference focuses on the latest in health science, as well as health policy and practice issues.

On Monday, November 9, at 8:30 am, Laure Almairac will present “Strengthening Rwanda's Health System and Access to Clean Water: A District-managed Grants Mechanism” at the session Strengthening Health Systems. Almairac will discuss how the IntraHealth-led Twubakane Project’s District Incentive Fund (DIF) grants helped meet Rwandan districts’ priority health needs. Since 2006, eight of the program-supported districts committed a portion of their DIF grants to addressing poor potable water quality or waste management. Almairac will explore the communities’ successes, including building water tanks, installing septic tanks on latrines near markets, repairing rainwater recuperation systems, and rehabilitating water purification systems.

At 12:30 pm, Constance Newman will present the poster “Responding to Violence against Women in Rwanda: An Issue of Health Equity.” This poster will explore the results of the Twubakane Program’s assessment of the readiness of Rwandan health facilities, the politico-legal environment, and the community to respond to violence against women (VAW) in three districts. Newman will show the effects of violence against women and discuss follow-on activities that promote health equity by eliminating obstacles to service access and better health.

At 2:30 pm, James McMahan will discuss “Connecting Remote Populations to HIV Services: Lay Counselors in Zambia” at the roundtable Innovative Responses to HIV and Africa. IntraHealth leads the Improving Access and Uptake of Routine Confidential Counseling and Testing Project, which has been training lay counselors to provide voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) services in some rural Zambian districts. These lay counselors are now working to help scale up VCT services in locations far from health facilities and with limited trained Ministry of Health personnel. McMahan will examine the benefits of using lay counselors to provide VCT services and the efforts to make their service provision sustainable.

At 4:30 pm, Constance Newman will present “Alleviating the Burden of Responsibility: Men as Providers of HIV/AIDS Care and Support in Lesotho” at the session HIV/AIDS I. Newman will examine the results of a study conducted by the IntraHealth-led Capacity Project on the need and feasibility of bringing men into community-based HIV/AIDS caregiving in Lesotho. Newman will discuss the study results, including the finding that engaging men as care providers is feasible with financial incentives, training and support. Newman will also explore the actions recommended by the study to enable a response to community-based HIV/AIDS care and support needs.

On Wednesday, November 11, 8:30 am, Marsha Hamilton will present “Pre-repair Centers for Fistula Care in Ethiopia” at the session Child Survival and Child Health 2. As part of the IntraHealth-supported Fistula Care Project, unique pre-repair centers were developed to screen clients and improve their nutrition and health status before surgery. Hamilton will explain how the pre-repair centers work, as well as describing the experiences of center service recipients and the project’s concurrent fistula prevention work.

At 12:30 pm, Sara Lewis will present at the session Advancing Public Health Nursing Education on “Learning for Performance: Bolstering Education for Armenian Nurses.” Based on Project NOVA’s work, Lewis will discuss the effect of IntraHealth’s Learning for Performance approach to designing in-service training of rural community nurses in safe motherhood clinical skills. After the training led to over 20% increases in postpartum and antenatal care performance scores, Project NOVA developed a pilot program integrating Learning for Performance and safe motherhood clinical skills training materials into nurses' and midwives' pre-service training curriculum.

Further information about IntraHealth’s activities will be available at the conference’s Public Health Expo.