30 Jun HRH2030 Awards Health Workforce Resilience Prize to Nyaya Health Nepal and TNH Health Brazil
HRH2030 announced the winners of the HRH2030 Health Workforce Resilience Prize on June 24, 2020, recognizing Nyaya Health Nepal and TNH Health with $25,000 each for their innovative approaches to foster health worker resiliency. USAID Global Health Bureau Assistant Administrator Dr. Alma Golden and Director of the Office of Health Systems Kelly Saldaña joined HRH2030 for the virtual prize ceremony.
Dr. Golden noted that the prize was a positive event at a time when the global health workforce is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This is our first human resources for health resilience prize, and it does identify new ideas and proven approaches that you already are developing and utilizing around the world. It is an example of the journey to self-reliance, that countries are developing their own ideas, their own approaches, that work in their [own] context.” She added, “The world is facing a lot of challenges. I think it’s really remarkable that this award was set up last year and it’s very pertinent to what is happening now. This is a bright spot for us, and we need to celebrate what you have done.”
Before announcing the two winning organizations, Kelly Saldaña remarked, “We know how important the health workforce is to respond to the needs of a population and to provide uninterrupted, accessible, accountable, affordable, and reliable health care in the face of everyday challenges and especially now during times of larger shocks such as COVID -19.” She continued, “Building health worker resilience can reduce the gaps between business as usual and establish stronger systems that can absorb and respond to shocks at any scale.”
The two prize winning organizations come from very different countries with their own health issues, but both winners are committed to quality health service provision to vulnerable populations, and also to ensuring a well-supported health workforce, one that has the right tools to do their work and to support their communities’ health needs. Both organizations have developed innovative, technology-based solutions to pressing health worker challenges.
Nyaya Health Nepal provides free, quality health services to underserved communities while striving to develop a sustainable integrated model of healthcare that can ultimately be handed over to the government and scaled up across the country. They were awarded the Health Workforce Resilience Prize for their integrated Electronic Health Record system, NepalEHR, an open source, digital platform that seamlessly integrates registration, clinical diagnoses, prescriptions, reporting, and supply chain management. NepalEHR enables health workers to do their jobs with greater efficiency and gives them more bandwidth to respond to the changing dynamics that they encounter in their work.
TNH Health is a Brazil-based social impact venture that applies innovative new technologies to traditional therapy and health coaching and lowers the cost of mental health by creating artificial intelligence (AI)-powered virtual health assistants. They were awarded the Health Workforce Resilience Prize for their innovative app, called Vitalk, a mental health chatbot that delivers psycho-education, mood monitoring, and brief evidence-based interventions in an engaging conversational format to improve mental health and resilience in health workers.
In addition to the two prize winners, the judges awarded a $5,000 honorable mention to the African Center for Global Health and Social Transformation (ACHEST). This pan-African nonprofit organization developed a training strategy to help newly qualified health professionals in Uganda smoothly make the challenging transition from students to responsible and resilient health workers upon induction. It supports fledgling health workers to navigate their challenging work environment, build strong relationships, and manage stress early in their careers.
To watch a recording of the prize ceremony, visit the HRH2030 Vimeo channel.
Illustrations of our virtual award ceremony by artist Tobey Busch (click each image for a full-resolution pdf):
