Number of clients served:
September 2013: 2000 clients
Saúde Criança
Target geography
Target Population
Target income level
- Bottom 20%
Health focus
- Maternal, newborn and child health
- Primary care
Summary
Saúde Criança aims to promote the biopsychosocial well-being of children and families who live below the poverty line by approaching health in an integrated way and as a social inclusion instrument.Key program components
Associação Saúde Criança, founded in 1991 by Dr. Vera Cordeiro, is a nonprofit organization that works to break the cycle of misery, illness, hospitalization, readmission, and death among children released from public hospitals. These children and their families are referred to the organization by a multidisciplinary team of medical professionals. Saúde Criança then works with them to create a customized Family Action Plan that focuses on five different domains of well-being: health, income, housing, education, and citizenship.
This pioneering approach to healthcare is based on the idea that in addition to biological factors, diseases in low-income contexts stem from the social ills associated with poverty.
Saúde Criança's methodology has proven to be so effective at tackling the root problem of disease that it has been adopted by 23 other public health institutions throughout Brazil and has already assisted more than 43,000 people to date. It has moreover inspired public policy in the city of Belo Horizonte and, in 2010, became a social franchise. Families assisted by the organization have seen a 35% average increase in income, 60% decrease in rehospitalization days, and significant improvement in their children's health. Saúde Criança has been nationally and internationally recognized for its transparency, social impact and methodology.
Among the prizes it has received are included the UBS Global Development Network Award- 1° most innovative social project, 1° NGO in Latin America by Global Journal Magazine, and Ashoka Innovations for Health: Solutions that Cross Borders by Ashoka Change Makers.
Scale
Financials
Reported Results
Related Programs
Pastoral da Criança, founded by Dr Zilda Arns and the confederation of Catholic Bishops in Brazil, aims the holistic development of children and promotes the development of families and communities, without distinction of race, profession, nationality, gender, political and religious affiliations.
Living goods is an “Avon-like” network of franchised community health promoters who provide health education and earn a living selling essential health products door-to-door at prices affordable to the poor.
The Mahila Swahsta Sewa network is a fractional franchise of 173 health providers in Nepal that provide a variety of family planning/reproductive health and maternal and child care services.
Care 2 Communities (C2C) provides primary health care services to poor communities in Haiti through a social enterprise model. C2C clinics provide affordable, high-quality care and are financially self-sustaining after 3 years of operations.
Djantoli (formerly Pesinet) designs and deploys innovative proximity (technology-based) services targeting children and their mothers. These services include regular home-based health monitoring, health insurance, and education to prevention.
