We aim to search, Identify and research into social innovations that affect the quality of health delivery in Ghana. We also seek, document, study and research into new innovations that will positively impact the healthcare delivery in the country. Our first crowdsourcing of social innovations at the University of Ghana was conducted in July 2020. We received 13 submissions from faculty members and students. Both faculty and students were excited about this initiative as it provided an opportunity for them to share their innovation solutions with a wider audience. Site visits and case studies for shortlisted innovations followed the crowdsourcing call.

In December 2020, we launched a nationwide call for social innovations where we received 12 submissions. These were subjected to in-house and external review processes in March 2021.

In July 2021, we organised a national dissemination and launch to recognise innovators from our two calls. This event was held at the University of Ghana. It was attended onsite by 30 people (restricted because of COVID-19) which included five innovators, researchers, policy makers and implementers, multinational development partners (UNICEF, WHO), and non-governmental organizations. Partners from the SIHI Network as well as local and global partners joined the event virtually. The event provided a platform to sensitize people about social innovations in health, recognise innovation, and link them to partners and institutions that could provide financial support for scale-up in line with SIHI Ghana’s goal.

We conducted a field visit to one of the social innovations recognised during the nationwide crowdsourcing call. During this visit interviews were conducted with the innovator, his team members and beneficiaries. The innovator formed a non-governmental organization known as Impact Mission Ghana (IMG) in 2018. This organisation has a team of young advocates who use various community engagement strategies to create awareness about viral hepatitis, free screening of people for hepatitis B and providing subsidized vaccination to residents in the rural community in Upper East Region of Ghana. A case study is being developed from field interactions and interviews.

We received a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant from the Health Effectiveness Campaign Coalition (a global taskforce for global health) to conduct an innovative study which would help transition the point mass distribution of the Long Lasting Insecticide Treated Bednet Campaign into Ghana’s Primary Health Care System (Community-based Health Planning and Services Strategy. Through this research a nine-member team named Community Health Advocacy Team was formed in six communities across two regions (Volta and Eastern) in Ghana. The team planned and carried out social and behavioural change communication in the communities to encourage people to regularly sleep under bednet. These activities are in line with the hub’s overall goal of championing the creation and sharing of social innovations to help address existing health problems. All members of the hub participated in the study and community dissemination of the findings of the study which took place on 17-18 May 2022 (in Eastern region) and 23-24 of May 2022 (in volta region). The manuscript produced from this research has been accepted for publication in BMJ Open as part of SIHI BMJ Innovations Collection.

One of the key activities of the hub is to look for external funding for research through writing of proposals for grants. To achieve this, the team is collaborating with UNICEF and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to develop a proposal to be submitted to Medical Research Grant (MRC) in United Kingdom. This proposal is intended to train postgraduate students in implementation research in the area of child health. The plan is to incorporate social innovations in health into the training package for awardees of such scholarship scheme. The full draft is ready and being reviewed by partner institutions.

We offer advocacy and initiate processes to make social innovation in health a national discourse for researchers, policymakers, and implementers.

We held a meeting in Accra in late 2022 with 20 selected stakeholders to discuss the adoption of the findings of its participatory research on malaria prevention and control. The meeting was attended by National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) Manager Dr. Keziah Malm, Deputy Programme Manager Incharge of Monitoring and Evaluation Dr. Nana Yaw Peprah, two Deputy Regional Directors of Public Health, two District Directors of Health, and other key partners in malaria control.