Keti Klaba addresses mental health in Nepalese girls through interactive lessons and community service. Led by Nepali university women, and supplied with adaptive kits of lessons and resources, these clubs provide girls with strong role models, incentives to stay in school, and increased social support from peers and community members. Mental health is a sensitive topic in Nepal, so this program will focus on building general social support to avoid the negative impacts of stigma surrounding programs that address mental health. Through interactive lessons and community service, the central goals of the Keti Klaba (Girl’s Clubs) project are to improve the mental health of pre-adolescent girls in Nepal, and to provide an incentive for girls to continue their education. By the first year, the project will establish 2 Keti Klaba in Nepal.
Slow-sand filtration (SSF) is a tertiary treatment process that has been widely used for drinking water treatment. This technology has yet to be applied to wastewater treatment on a large scale. Pathogen reduction can be further enhanced by the addition of seeds from Moringa oleifera (a typical tree in Guatemala), which have proteins with antimicrobial properties. This project proposes to construct and operate a pilot-scale slow seed-sand filtration system at UC Davis to assess the feasibility of this technology, then to build a pilot-scale system in Sololá, Guatemala in order to adjust the system to local conditions. If successful, the pilot project will serve to encourage the community to build a full-scale treatment system.
This project proposes an innovative strategy to alleviate Vitamin A (VA) deficiency in the developing world by harnessing the metabolic power of a probiotic bacterium, Lactobacillus casei. By engineering L. casei to produce provitamin A (β-carotene) during yogurt fermentation, the team can develop a safe and sustainable method of increasing dietary intake of VA. This provitamin A biofortified (i.e., enhanced) yogurt can support VA status and benefit the health of populations in India who consume yogurt as a staple. Moreover, the bacteria strain can be produced inexpensively, freeze-dried into a room-temperature-stable powder, and seamlessly integrated into existing yogurt production cycles. As L. casei is common in many different fermentations processes, this strain could be adapted for use in many other human and animal food sources. Once this strain becomes established in a fermentation system, it will self-perpetuate to ensure a sustainable source of dietary β-carotene.
India Smiles is a 3-year project aimed at alleviating childhood malnutrition and poor oral health outcomes caused by the transition from traditional agricultural-based diets to processed snack and “junk foods” in India. Through an effective entrepreneurial and social marketing model for community-based distribution of oral health care products and services by local community health workers, India Smiles works towards improving oral health in children ages up to age six. The project will employ oral hygiene education, application of fluoride varnish, preventative oral health care, dental examination, and distribution of toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental assistance to provide not only health benefits for mothers and children, but also financial benefits for the entrepreneurial health workers fostering a system of community involvement and sustainability.
Emmunify enables patients in the most underserved regions of developing countries to easily keep an electronic copy of their vaccination record on their cell phone. Emmunify’s electronic record allows health workers to easily identify patients, track their vaccination status, and administer the right vaccine at the right time.
This team aims to open a maternal care unit with an onsite OB/GYN in the Knights Landing community of Yolo County. Since the closing of CommuniCare in 2008, the community of approximately 750 migrant families and undocumented workers living in Knights Landing has lacked access to comprehensive health care in their community up until the beginning of this year.
The project will provide women with more birth control options, urine tests, emergency contraception, and prenatal packages. These packages would include prenatal vitamins and vouchers for transportation to hospitals in Sacramento and the greater Yolo County. The goal is to integrate community members in all steps of the process, ensuring they take an active role in their own health care and the health care of their neighbors. Que Viva La Mujer would not just be a place where women can see a gynecologist in their own community, but also their resource for all their maternal and post parturition health care and educational needs.
Haath Mein Sehat (HMS), Hindi for “Health in Hands,” is a student organization at UC Berkeley that has worked to address water, sanitation, and hygiene issues in urban slums in Mumbain and Hubli, India since 2004. Moving forward, HMS will concentrate its efforts on hand hygiene among children as a way to tackle diarrheal disease and respiratory infection—two leading causes of childhood malnutrition and mortality in India. In doing so, HMS will positively impact household livelihoods by easing the economic burden (i.e. expense of money, time, and effort) often associated with taking care of chronically ill children. (Note: This project originally won in the Big Ideas “Safe Water Enterprise” category.)
Andrew and Virginia Rudd present big ideas winners a pitch day award, April 2012.Photo credit: Blum Center
This project addresses the unmet needs of clinics serving the most at-risk populations in developing countries, where anemia is prevalent and has a great effect on treatment of other diseases. The ability to rapidly detect hemoglobin levels throughout pregnancy and during childbirth mitigates the risks associated with anemia. Working with Dr. Megan Huchko of UCSF and Nick Pearson of the non-profit Jacaranda Health, the team seeks to develop an improved method to assessing hemoglobin levels that is affordable and accessible to mobile clinics working in resource-poor areas. One current method commonly used in clinics, the WHO Hemoglobin Color Scale (HCS), uses a comparative color scale to determine hemoglobin levels. While affordable and yielding quick results, the test is based on subjective assessment from the clinician and can give inaccurate results due to variation in color interpretation and lighting. The project’s goal is to program a phone application that can measure hemoglobin concentration based on the RGB values of a digital phone image of a blood sample, allowing for the quantification of color and eliminating the ambiguities and human error.
