Location Rio de Janeiro Headquarters New York, United States Founded 1991 | Area served Brazil Founder Vera Cordeiro | |
Product Post-hospitalization care Website brazilchildhealth.org
saudecrianca.org.br | ||
Brazil Child Health (Associação Saúde Criança and formerly Renascer) is a Brazilian nonprofit organization that works to break the cycle of hospital readmissions of critically ill children from low-income backgrounds. It recognizes that illnesses are not simply matters of biology but are rooted in socioeconomic factors that aggravate and perpetuate the disease. To go beyond medical treatment and to secure patient health for the long term, Associação Saúde Criança espouses a biopsychosocial model of healthcare that provides comprehensive post-hospitalization care and aims to bring the family out of poverty. It has an office based in New York City under the name Brazil Child Health that is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and coordinates international fundraising for the organization.
Contents
History
Associação Saúde Criança was founded in 1991 by Vera Cordeiro. While a physician in the pediatric department at Hospital da Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, she saw many of her patients fall into a cycle of hospitalization, treatment, discharge, reinfection, and rehospitalization. She realized that treatments given at the hospital were ineffective if her patients simply returned to the environments that made them sick in the first place. In response, she began Associação Saúde Criança out of her own home with a handful of volunteers in order to provide for families the items required to keep them healthy outside of the hospital, such as food, clothing, and financial support.
Saúde Criança has since expanded, with a wide network that ranges across six states in Brazil. Its efforts have been celebrated both in Brazil and by the international community.
Family backgrounds
Saúde Criança works with families from some of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro and all over Brazil. The typical family assisted by the program comes from a favela and lives in poverty with little access to government resources. In this context, acute and chronic medical conditions have severe and long-lasting consequences on not only the family´s health but its overall welfare as well. Frequently, the decision to purchase medicine or continue treatment for a sick child means being unable to buy food for the rest of the family. Even if the expensive treatments are purchased, they are rendered ineffective when the child returns to the dirty alleyways and cramped housing characteristic of most houses in a favela. Thus, families become poorer, both financially and in spirit, while their health conditions stagnate or even worsen.
Methodology
Saúde Criança´s methodology revolves around the Family Action Plan, a 2-year blueprint that outlines all of the major goals a family should aim to achieve in the realms of housing, income generation, education, citizenship, and health. It is created shortly after the family has been identified by and referred to Saúde Criança from a partnering hospital. Saúde Criança volunteers interview the family to gain a better sense of its background and together they establish the objectives of the plan.
Though each plan is tailored to the individual needs of the families, Saúde Criança maintains a minimum set of standards that any family must achieve in order to be considered healthy and to graduate from the program. The goals and strategies differ according to the area of health they address.
Results
With a comprehensive metric developed in conjunction with McKinsey & Co. for evaluating the social impact made in each of the five key areas of health, Saúde Criança has carefully tracked the progress of families within the program from their initial interview to their final graduation. The results of this review program show that family income increased by an average of 32% while the average number of days of hospitalization was reduced by more than 66%. In addition, before Saúde Criança, only 28% of the children were considered to be in good health, 48% in satisfactory health, and 24% in life-threatening conditions. After families were assisted by the organization, the numbers dramatically shifted to 52% in good health, 41% in satisfactory health, and only 7% in life-threatening conditions.
Social franchise
Saúde Criança has inspired the formation of 23 other organizations that have adopted its methodology, such as Refazer, Repartir, and Reacender. To consolidate its brand, in 2010, it transformed itself into a social franchise and now counts 11 branches in six states in Brazil.
Public policy
The municipality of Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais has officially incorporated Saúde Criança's methodology into its public health program, "Família Cidadã: Cidade Solidaria." Saúde Criança is currently working with the municipalities of Rio de Janeiro, R.J. and Florianopolis, S.C., on similar pilot programs.
Awards
Associação Saúde Criança has been recognized within Brazil and around the world. Its awards include: