The pandemic has profoundly disrupted the provision of health services across the globe, particularly in remote and rural regions. Helping to influence health policy in Peru Mamás del Río (Mothers of the River) is a multidisciplinary initiative that improves the health of mothers and newborns in remote and rural indigenous communities along 1,000 kilometres of the Amazon river in Peru and Colombia. The initiative uses social innovations to empower community health workers by addressing the healthcare delivery gap using mobile devices with relevant information to ensure the best patient outcomes. A special collection on social innovations in health 30 published by BMJ in 2022 helps to showcase the Mamás del Río programme’s success in helping community workers adapt in response to communication challenges posed by a strict, national lockdown. In their paper, Dr Magaly Blas and her colleagues evaluate how technological interventions help communities adapt to a new clinical setting within a post-pandemic context. Since the BMJ Innovations publication of the collection: Social Innovations in Health, Mamás del Río has expanded into remote regions of the border between Peru and Colombia. The Peruvian Health Minister is also considering the evidence provided in the paper to inform a policy change that will formalise the Mamás del Río programme throughout the region as part of the national health system.
This policy change will help build capacity and efficiency amongst community health workers and supervise the community workers in the field in a programme they need to improve maternal and neonatal health. Blas believes that having an evaluation of her work published in a reputable and robustly peer-reviewed journal from BMJ provides credibility that can help influence the Peruvian government to consider implementing critical policy change. This change will promote better health systems by preventing diseases in Amazonian communities.
We found in BMJ a voice to report on what was happening to us during the pandemic to the international world.” Dr Magaly Blas Medical epidemiologist, professor and researcher at Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University in Lima, Peru
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