New Digital Health Tool Supports CHW Programs: Maturity Model and Toolkit

Living Goods in collaboration with HealthEnabled, Ministries of Health and other stakeholders have co-designed a digital health maturity model to help governments and other community health implementers grow effective digital health programs for the community level. The model evaluates three domains: (1) community health programs; (2) policy, funding & technical Infrastructure and; (3) existing health technologies, positioning health systems on a maturity level based on a 5-staged continuum scale. Through the use of this model and the tool kit (“how-to-guide”), programs are able to identify areas of priority that inform strategy development, investment cases and a structured pathway to implementing a scalable sustainable digital health program for community health.

The project, funded by the Johnson & Johnson Foundation, engaged stakeholders through a variety of means, including key informant interviews, and participatory design workshops with program managers from the Kenyan and Ugandan Ministries of Health, partner organizations and other experts. National and sub-national level testing workshops were held in Uganda and Kenya to validate the tool’s simplicity of use and comprehensiveness. Interactive reviewer webinar sessions were held with participation from governments & stakeholders.

In the spirit of Living Goods’ value of making no small plans, the model was presented at the Community Health Worker Symposium in Bangladesh on November 22 as a pre-launch before its launch at the 2019 Annual Global Digital Health Forum in Washington DC on December 9. For expanded access, the maturity model shall be accessible globally as an online digital resource for adaptation and use by country governments such as Rwanda and Burkina Faso as well as partners like UNICEF who have demonstrated interest in adopting the model for use in strengthening their community health strategies.