Three Lessons We Can Learn from 40+ Years of Community Health Worker Programs
What will it take to finally create sustainable, scalable programs?
Laura Hoemeke
Former Director of Health Policy & Systems
Laura Hoemeke has nearly 25 years of experience in global health, including field assignments in the Central African Republic, Benin, Senegal, and Rwanda, and short-term assignments throughout East, West, and Central Africa. Her areas of expertise include advocacy and policy, communications, and program design and management. She has worked in family planning, maternal and child health, malaria prevention and control, and HIV/AIDS prevention and control, as well as health systems strengthening and health governance.
Hoemeke began her career as a journalist in Chicago, then moved to the Central African Republic, where, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, she worked as a member of a CDC-supported child survival project team. Hoemeke then worked for Africare, overseeing projects throughout Francophone Africa. Hoemeke served as USAID Benin’s Family Health Technical Advisor for four years. In early 2003, she joined IntraHealth International as Regional Director for West and Central Africa, based in Senegal.
From 2005 through early 2010, Hoemeke was based in Rwanda as the director of IntraHealth’s successful USAID-funded Twubakane Decentralization and Health Program, which contributed to the country’s impressive results, particularly in the areas of health sector decentralization, family planning, and child health. In 2010, she joined IntraHealth’s headquarters leadership team as director of communications and advocacy and served as director of health policy & systems. Hoemeke has authored several publications and has spoken and presented at numerous global health conferences and other events.
Hoemeke earned her doctorate in public health from UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in health policy and management. She has an master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
VITAL
3 Big Ideas Emerge from the 2018 World Health Assembly
Is the World Health Organization reembracing its original principles?
Universal Health Coverage: Robust Policy and Systems Research (Still) Needed
We must learn from what has worked—and more importantly, what hasn’t.
First-Mile Family Planning Can Help More Women Avoid Unintended Pregnancies
Community-based services should be designed from the point of view of the communities they serve.
Want to Talk about Family Planning? Reach Out to Your Local Mayor
Advocacy efforts to improve access to and use of family planning must include local government officials.
For One Health Worker, Childbirth Proved More Dangerous than Ebola
Salome was one of 830 women around the world who died that day from problems related to childbirth.
A Death in Durham Stirs Drive to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence
A new research award honors the life of our friend and colleague, Raluca Iosif.
Have an Unmet (Contraceptive) Need?
“Do you want to get pregnant in the next two years?” How would you answer this question?
Universal Health Coverage as a Global Goal: Is Everything Old New Again?
If the global community wasn’t able to achieve health for all by the year 2000, how can we do it by 2030? Here are a few ways.
Words Matter in Our Global Commitments to Advance National Health Workforce Strategies
What does it take for a country to follow through on big commitments?
Future Planning: Young People Making Choices
As we celebrate International Youth Day, we’re talking with young people about planning their futures.
Ebola Changed Everything
The 68th World Health Assembly made it clear that Ebola has fundamentally changed the direction of global health discourse.
In Health Systems Strengthening, the Big Question Is Not What, but How
It shouldn’t be just one part of what we do in global health. It should be part of how we do everything.
After a Lifetime on the Ground, a Day in the Clouds
We sat down with Fatimata Touré to find out what it’s like to be an International Woman of Courage, how the award will change her life, and whether reconciliation is possible in war-battered northern Mali.
Future Planning for Healthy, Productive Lives
Thanks to an unusual collaboration, some young beat makers inspired us to call it what it is: not family planning, but future planning.
For Young People, Is Family Planning a Misnomer?
By calling what we do family planning, we may be ignoring the fact that many young people aren’t trying to plan families—they’re trying to plan futures.
These Six Ethiopian Nursing Students Will Become Lifesavers
IntraHealth is working with the Alkan College to help young women from remote parts of Ethiopia to become community nurses.
Welcome to My Mother's Kitchen: Task Sharing and Innovation
Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda's mother was a true innovator—by necessity.
Nine Polio Workers Dead in Nigeria: How Can We Move beyond Condemnation to Actions that Protect Health Workers?
First Pakistan, now Nigeria. Today, nine female health workers were slain while working on a polio eradication campaign.
Tackling the Global Burden of Disease, One Health Worker at a Time
We've come a long way over the past 40 years in preventing and treating infectious diseases.
Why Does a Woman Use Contraception? For a Better Life.
I consider myself a strong advocate for the wide availability of family planning methods, and of women being able to decide if and when they want to become pregnant.
Family Planning: It Takes a Health Worker—and Saves Money and Lives
We need to invest more, globally, to ensure that health workers are there to expand access and offer services.
Political Support and Popular Opinion on the Largest-Ever Family Planning Conference: Part I
Wrapping up earlier this month, the International Conference on Family Planning brought together more than 2,000 participants for three days of science and advocacy on family planning.
Political Support and Popular Opinion on the Largest-Ever Family Planning Conference: Part II
Changing opinions and behaviors around family planning in Senegal may happen slowly.
Following the Leaders: Global Fund Helped Make Country Ownership a Reality
Yesterday, donor countries and corporations pledged a record-setting $11.7 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The largest pledge came from the United States government—$4 billion over the next three years, which is an increase of nearly 40% over past commitments and the largest increase of any donor country.
For Manuela
Sexual violence is a reality of the developed and the developing world. Globally, one in three women experience sexual violence in their lifetimes.
From Polio to PEPFAR and Beyond: Can the GHI Reform the Way We Do Global Health?
For many in the blogopshere and the Twitter world Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Monday reenergized our commitment to the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and the promise of transforming the way we practice global health work. Like many, I was left with questions of how exactly this initiative will work, but Clinton’s passing reference to the polio outbreak in northern Nigeria also reminded me of the imperative that GHI succeed.
Giving Birth: the Good News
Last week, Time published “The Perils of Pregnancy: One Woman’s Tale of Dying to Give Birth,” a poignant photo essay and article on the grim reality of women dying in childbirth in Sierra Leone. I read the piece with mixed emotions. The images, the tone of the Time article contrasted sharply with everything I heard last week during Women Deliver 2010 conference: family planning use is increasing, child survival is improving, and there have been steady declines in the number of women dying from pregnancy-related causes, according to a recent Lancet article.
Nyakubawa Ambasaderi, mwarakoze cyane kudusura!*
What a pleasure for IntraHealth to be able to host Rwanda’s Ambassador to the US, His Excellency James Kimonyo, at our headquarters offices here in North Carolina last week!