Empowered volunteers war against neglected diseases in Plateau, Niger, FCT

Noise pollution can have negative impacts on health, but researchers in different parts of the world are working on projects that all aim to address this concern. Some solutions – such as concrete structures surrounding railway tracks – have been in use for quite some time, but now newer projects from the United Kingdom to Mumbai aim to use similar design thinking for both short-term and consistent noise events.

Melalogic is an app that provides skin health resources to people with dark skin. The uses crowdsourced imaging data to confront racial bias in diagnostic artificial intelligence. Users can access the Black Skin Resource Center with information on 14 issues that affect people with darker skin. The app also shares health posters that physicians use to share information with their patients and videos with dermatologic tips. In the works is Melalogic 2.0, an immersive telehealth experience.

Hispanic residents in North Carolina went from having one of the lowest vaccination rates to one of the highest. The health department ran bilingual ads on a variety of media types, including social media and held virtual town halls and Facebook Live events. They also paid community health workers in each county to use their existing relationships with Latino residents and improve access to information about the vaccine and to the vaccine itself. Outreach from trusted ambassadors has proven more effective among communities that have deep mistrust of institutionalized structures.

Doctors Without Borders treats malnutrition in areas of Nigeria facing food shortages due to violence and insurgency. When safe, it runs a mobile clinic to provide basic health care, including nutritional support, particularly to children. When communities are not safe enough to enter, the organization trains community members in basic patient care and provides them the tools to run basic tests and treat malnutrition. Community health workers are also trained to treat patients, dispense medications, and educate caregivers about child nutrition.

Micromek builds low-cost drones using mostly 3D printers and recycled materials and delivers supplies to rural health clinics and relief organizations during natural disasters. The company’s drones can access a drone-friendly air corridor set up by the Malawian government to make the journeys more successful.

Rays of Hope Support Initiative or ROHSI conducts outreach in rural parts of Nigeria to educate people about hypertension and diabetes. A group of volunteers, including medical professionals, provides free screenings, medical advice, and free medications to people with hypertension and diabetes at their biannual community outreaches.

The Health Wagon provides medical care to those experiencing addiction. The Health Wagon also provides services for those in recovery, including medications, counseling, and peer support groups in an effort to reduce relapses and overdose deaths which have skyrocketed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rather than prescribing opioids for pain treatment, an Ellenville Regional Hospital program treats emergency room patients with chronic pain using non-opioid treatments and offers referrals to local behavioral health services to address the issue of opioid addiction and overdoses.

An initiative to draw more people to entry-level healthcare professions is seeing success in Ohio. A collaboration of healthcare employers is training and promoting employees to “strengthen the healthcare employee pipeline.”

The Clearwater Canyon Pharmacy helped organize an easily accessible COVID-19 vaccine clinic in a rural, elderly town, increasing its vaccine status to 75%, an unprecedented number in the area.