The regional call (crowdsourcing) for social innovations in health in the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic, led by PAHO in collaboration with LAC and Honduras hub was launched on May 26th, 2021. In June, July, August and September, we followed up and provided support to the call in terms of communications in Spanish, publications on Facebook and first filter of the evaluation process. In total, we received 128 applications from 17 countries of the LAC region, 106 of which were eligible for evaluation. From Central America and Dominican Republic, we received 13 applications from four different countries.

The standard evaluation and due process were completed with support from an independent panel of distinguished reviewers and on November 19th the 4 winners and additional for honorable mentions were announced. A winner and honorable mention were selected for each of the four geographic areas of Latin America and the Caribbean considered for the crowdsourcing call. Having winner and honorable mention innovations from each different subregion allowed strengthening the representation and awareness about social innovation in health across the region.

Learn more about these calls here:

https://socialinnovationinhealth.org/identification/identifying-innovations-lac/.

From July 26th to 28th we developed a 20-hour virtual workshop about community-based methodologies in alliance with the SIHI Honduras Hub in the framework of the UNAH annual scientific event named Jornada Científica / Congress of Health Sciences Research, which this year organized its 28th and 15th editions, respectively. We had the participation of 18 people interested in social transformation in health (12 from Honduras and 6 from Colombia). It specifically addressed the theoretical bases and methodological principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Participatory Action Research (PAR), and Design Thinking. This training provided important knowledge and tools to strengthen capacities in participatory approaches to research, which are key for research in social innovation in health.

Our team of researchers visited each of the selected social innovations in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Peru from the 2018-2019 innovation calls to learn more about their work. Six full-length case studies have been produced as well as short films on each of the social innovations. Learn more about the case studies below.

We continue to grow our Latin American and the Caribbean Alliance in Social Innovation for Health (ALACISS network). Currently, our network has more than 50 stakeholders representing different sectors and interested in the promotion of social innovation for health. We have different strategies to strengthen our network such as workshops, webinars, online tools, among others.

If you would like to become part of our online community, contact us.

Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) – This course offers tools on how to work with communities, highlighting the importance of the democratisation of knowledge to achieve real initiatives that reduce social inequity in health and are characterised by intersectoriality to have far-reaching impact. Learn more about this course.

Workshop on Building and Strengthening Collaborative Initiatives in Social Innovation in Health in Latin America and the Caribbean – This workshop is based on Design Thinking methodology to generate proposals for social innovation in health from processes of divergence and convergence.

Strengthening Communication and Dissemination Capacities in Support of SIHI Innovations – We developed the workshop: “Communicate and capitalize on our social innovation projects: Strategies for effective dissemination of projects” between January 24th and February 5th,2022. The main objective was to strengthen collaboration networks, identify opportunities and barriers in communication strategies, make Communication diagnosis (clinics) and design a new communication strategy for their innovations.

This workshop responded to the recognizing the need for innovators to strengthen their communication skills for the dissemination of their innovations.

During the month of August, 2 members of the LAC (1 as an observer) and 2 members of the Honduras Hub participated in the pilot of the Community Engagement workshop and learning package, led by Philippines Hub, in order to evaluate and provide feedback to this project which aims to contribute to build capacity on and understand effective community engagement practices. The pilot included asynchronous training and synchronous sessions. The workshop was attended by practitioners from Colombia, Honduras, Malawi and Nigeria, as well as observers from WHO and the various project partners.

This project is very valuable to our Hub as it is an opportunity to build capacity in this area, as well as align perfect with our efforts to promote and strengthen capacities on community-based participatory research methodologies in the LAC region.

We have consolidated a multidisciplinary internship programme that contributes to knowledge generation in Social Innovation in Health, co-creation of educational materials, field work for community-based research, and Social Appropriation of Knowledge. The SIHI LAC Hub has received the following national and international interns:

National Interns:
Luisa Fernanda Duque (Political sciences) (2018)
Adrian Fernandez (Epidemiology) (2018)
Angie Vanessa Salguero (Psychology) (2019)
Luis Felipe Parra (Psychology) (2019)
Juan Paulo Ruiz (Public Health) (2019)

International Interns:
Emmanuela Oppong (Biomedical Engineering) (2019)
Priyanka Shrestha (Global Health) (2019)
Kathleen Agudelo Paipilla (Social Communication and Journalism / Social Appropriation of Knowledge) (2019-2020)

The Hub developed this document to communicate targets areas of SIHI and the LAC Hub, as well as other results and achievements done by the Hub between 2017-2018. Learnings from the selected case studies and preliminary results of the documentary research are included in this document.

Download our findings brief to learn more

The LAC Hub started the line in documentary research with the purpose of defining a theoretical baseline for the concept of social innovation in health due to the lack of conceptual background around it.

Publications:

1. Documentary Research on Social Innovation in Health in Latin America. Diana María Castro-Arroyave, Luisa Fernanda Duque Paz, Management for Social Innovation Infectious Diseases of Poverty

2. Integrated vector control of Chagas disease in Guatemala: a case of social innovation in health. Diana María Castro-Arroyave, Maria Carlota Monroy, Maria Isabel Irurita. Infectious Diseases of Poverty

3. Exploring Social Innovation in Health in Central America and the Caribbean. Josselyn Mothe, Luis E. Vacaflor, Diana M. Castro-Arroyave,Luis Gabriel Cuervo, Nancy Gore Saravia. Pan American Journal of Public Health

4. Universities as catalysts of social innovation in health systems in low-and middle-income countries: a multi-country case study. van Niekerk, L., Mathanga, D.P., Juban, N., Diana Maria Castro A. Infectious Diseases of Poverty 9, 90 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40249-020-00684-5 • The WHO Community Engagement Package: Strengthening an Inclusive Global Public Health Approach. Omoleke, S.A., Bayugo, Y.V., Oyene, U.E., Abrahams, J., Gobat, N., Good, S., Manandhar, M., Elfeky, S., Hernandez Bonilla, A.G., Valentine, N., Alger, J., Huda, Q., Mustafa, S., Echavarria, M.I., Rakesh, A., Warren, T., Lapitan, J.M., Mier-Alpano, J.D., Spencer-Walters, D., Del Pilar Labarda, M., Mihut, M., Bhatiasevi, A., Ekwunife, O.I. International Journal of Epidemiology and Health Sciences.

5. “Social Innovation in Health: A Critical but Overlooked Component of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response.” Moscibrodzki, P., Jingjing Li, R., Peeling W, Halpaap B, Cuervo L.G, Blas M, Juban N, Labarda M, Tang W, and Tucker J.D.. BMJ Innovations

6. “Social Innovation in Health Monitoring & Evaluation Framework”. TDR/SIHI Global/SESH/ PAHO/SIHI LAC/Honduras Hub.

Visit this virtual collection of publications, interviews, news articles, and materials. You can also contribute to social innovation in health in the world that we are all building together.

The Virtual Café is a bimonthly webinar organized by the Social Innovation in Health Hub for Latin America and the Caribbean (SIHI LAC Hub) with support from Honduras Hub (dissemination, moderation chat). Its main objective is to bring together people and institutions from different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to exchange ideas and experiences of social innovation in health, and to generate a collective learning space around the topic and other related topics such as community health, digital health, crowdfunding, community-based methodologies, among others.

You can watch all our Virtual Coffee webinars here.

Together with the Colombian Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation (Minciencias), our team strengthened research activities to implement a community surveillance model for cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in a rural community in Colombia, and integrate social appropriation of knowledge. On 4-5 March 2021, we conducted an introductory workshop addressing vector-borne diseases and sharing information about a course in CL with community leaders, health organizations, and health volunteers in Pueblo Rico. This is to advance knowledge and skills in CL and promote inter-institutional coordination with health providers and health volunteers.

Two young reasearchers also created a project that aimed to co-create pedagogical materials with community leaders about cutaneous leishmaniasis, and develop skills and empower them to transmit the knowledge to their communities in Tumaco, Rovira and Pueblo Rico.

In the framework of the Talento Joven 2019 project funded by Minciencias, we conducted participatory workshops with community leaders from three rural communities in Colombia, developed with them an educational material on cutaneous leishmaniasis, created three radio capsules focused on the symptoms and prevention of cutaneous leishmanias that were broadcast on 11 community radio stations in Colombia, and co-planned and co-designed participatory workshops to be delivered by community leaders in their communities.

See the pedagogical material here

Listen to the radio capsules here

Also, we are developing another project focused on the social appropriation of knowledge with three other young talents. We have finished the co-creation of the following products:

– 2 brochures on CL and Malaria developed through a co-creation process with members of health institutions, see here

– 3 chapters of a podcast on leishmaniasis created in collaboration with volunteer health leaders, see here

– 3 TikTok videos on general information and prevention of the disease, see here

– The composition of a song in Embera (indigenous language) about leishmaniasis, see here

At the end of 2020, SIHI LAC strengthened the alliance with TecSalud, a company that supports the development of digital health projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. Now projects made can be visible in its Regional Map of Digital Health Policies and Programs and be part of its blog.

SIHI LAC also strengthened partnership with the Universidad de Antioquia, a public institution that has projects on social innovation, implementation research, and community health. Our collective work focuses on the training areas of implementation research and social innovation in health.

Articulating and reinforcing social innovation in health and intersectional gender research

CIDEIM/TDR advanced an intersectional project on gender and social innovation in May 2022, entitled “Intersection of gender with other social stratifies in the prevention and control of infectious diseases in indigenous and black communities of Pueblo Rico”.

The project seeks to understand how gender dynamics operate and the interaction between gender and known social stratifiers. It will explore the role for social innovations for health to address infectious disease among the participating communities, and aims to promote gender equality and inclusion.

Exchange of Experiences Among Latin American Social Innovators

Between 27th February and 3rd March 2023, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) in collaboration with the SIHI Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Hub, organised an exchange of experiences among social innovators recognised in the region.