Summary
With funding from the CDC, ThinkWell worked with Mozambique’s National Tuberculosis Program (NTP) to develop a feasibility assessment and design for a community-based model to identify, screen, and treat TB-positive miners and their families. The groundbreaking model incorporated mobile reporting, mobile payment, and performance-based financing.
The project focused on migrants who work in South African mines because miners are at extremely high risk of contracting TB and spreading the disease to their families. ThinkWell first conducted a needs assessment of available and necessary resources to effectively use GIS technology to determine miner migration and TB/HIV disease patterns across the South African border. We also assessed options for mobile technology platforms to support a program focused on screening, diagnosing, and treating miners and their families for TB and HIV.
Concurrently, we assessed community health workers’ capacity to engage in a performance-based financing, mobile technology-based model of service provision for miners and their families. We also assessment the feasibility of administering payments using a mobile platform. After gathering feedback and buy-in from relevant health authorities to support the program’s roll-out, we analyzed design elements for the program.
The outcome was TECHS, which stands for technology-enabled community health system, that leveraged the power of big data to radically expand the NTP’s ability to identify, treat, and support TB-infected Mozambicans in a cost-effective manner. Finally, ThinkWell determined five priority districts in Gaza and Inhambane provinces to pilot TECHS’s implementation. The GIS mapping data that we produced during the project allowed the CDC and stakeholders to better understand the geographic realities of cross-border miners’ health seeking and migration patterns.