Consejo de Salud Rural Andino (CSRA) is a non profit, non-governmental organization that specializes in administering health networks and it offers services in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating health projects with a family and community-based model. CSRA was established in 1983 by its parent organization, then known as Andean Rural Health Care in the United States and now known as Curamericas Global, Inc. Curamericas Global was founded in 1983 by Duke University and Johns Hopkins University graduate Henry Perry III, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H. and Alice Weldon, Ph.D. The organization’s work was initially based in Bolivia and has since expanded its services to Haiti, Liberia and Guatemala. Currently, Consejo de Salud Rural Andino in Bolivia has its headquarters in the city of La Paz, a regional office in El Alto, and a regional office in the city of Montero.
Curamericas and CSRA are known for the Census-Based, Impact-Oriented Methodology. The CBIO is a proven community-based primary health care model in a developing country setting that allows to better understand, effectively treat and accurately measure outcomes and impacts for the most common found causes of unnecessary suffering, sickness, including mortality reduction using census information and having collaboration from the community. The CBIO approach incorporates:
A community census of households and a health assessment of the project area, a drawing of maps and numbering of households, and the development of a program plan with community members that includes both epidemiologically driven health objectives as well as community perceived health priorities.
Native doctors, nurses, community health workers, and volunteers then conduct regularly scheduled home visits to targeted households whose census information reveals a high risk of illness or death. During these home visits, health knowledge and practices are measured and vital events are recorded so that families’ illnesses, health experiences, deaths, births, and migrations are tracked. This information is entered into a health information system so; program interventions can be measured and then analyzed with the participation of local people and leaders of the community.