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Financial Times Photo Essays and Special Report

The Center for Health Worker Innovation collaborated with the Financial Times and our partners to produce a series of photo essays that explore and build awareness of the challenges and opportunities facing the global health workforce.

The essays highlight individual health workers based in different parts of the world and their real-life experiences. Read their stories below and share:

1. What is the cure for the global healthcare worker shortage?

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A shortage of healthcare workers poses an existential threat to public health systems the world over and COVID-19 is making the situation even more critical. The Philippines’ long-standing nursing brain drain—driven by low pay and poor working conditions at home and the demand for Filipino nursing acumen overseas—has now become a full-blown crisis. Jonas Elmer Balneg has both a professional and personal perspective on the challenges facing nurses in the Philippines and the undoubted appeals of migration. A Charge Nurse at The Philippine General Hospital, Balneg has been working on the front line of the fight against the pandemic since the very outset. Read Balneg's story.

2. Delivering quality community-based healthcare, step-by-digital step

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Community health workers (CHWs) play an essential role in delivering healthcare in remote and hard-to-reach settings, although they often operate with limited resources and often need to travel long distances to deliver care. In Kenya more than 3,000 government CHWs like Magdalene Espan are using a mobile health app that assists with diagnoses and treatments while reducing infant and child mortality—it’s the kind of smart technology that could help transform essential healthcare in many developing countries. Read Espan's story.

3. Could community health workers reduce US health inequity

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COVID-19 may have exposed the legacy of decades of healthcare discrimination in the US, but the idea that race adversely affects health outcomes is a shared reality for community health workers such as Cheryl Garfield. The 52-year-old grandmother has endured personal trauma and strife and manages significant health issues—all while championing the health of the people in her community. Statistics revealing the disparity in healthcare outcomes across different racial and ethnic groups indicate how much work still needs to be done to deliver non-discriminatory healthcare and services. Read Garfield's story.

4. Bringing mental health resources to the frontlines of care with technology

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Frontline public healthcare in Brazil is conducted by community health agents (CHAs), however studies on the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of health workers have not factored in CHAS, in part because they are not formally considered healthcare professionals. Systems-based and innovative solutions such as the AI-powered app, Vitalk, aim to address this omission and help CHAs prioritize and manage their well-being. “I usually keep a reminder to use it twice a day. Once when I come home from work and then at 8pm. That is when I talk about how I am feeling and how my day went,” says Lucas Albuquerque, who works as a CHA in Bairro Vila Itaberaba, one of São Paulo’s northern neighbourhoods. Read Albuquerque's story.

5. The answer to improved community healthcare? Capacity building

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Community health workers (CHWs) play an important role in bridging the gap between public health systems and the wider communities that they serve around the world, helping to provide critical services such as immunisation programmes and pre- and post-natal care. One such CHW is mother of three Kola Lakshmi, who lives in Penjerla, a village near the city of Hyderabad, southern India’s tech powerhouse. Lakshmi is proud to call herself an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), a role introduced by the Indian government in 2005 to serve the needs of rural communities as part of its National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). Read Lakshmi's story.

6. Delivering healthcare across the urban-rural divide

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In China, where 39% of the population lives in rural areas, remote technologies are now being rolled out to improve access to healthcare and build capacity outside of the towns and cities. These platforms enable rural healthcare workers to perform vital procedures in the communities they serve and also allow specialist physicians to deploy their expertise remotely, thus providing access to specialised procedures that were previously only available in major urban centres. Cardiovascular-related procedures are of particular importance in China where cardiovascular disease requires “the attention and action of the whole society,” according to Dr Ma Changsheng, Director of the Cardiology Department at Beijing Anzhen Hospital, and Professor of Medicine and Chair of Faculty of Cardiovascular Disease at Capital Medical University. Read Dr. Ma's story.

Additionally, the Center also supported the development of an FT special report, Delivering Healthcare, looking at challenges facing the world’s health systems and how to solve them.