This May, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School for Dental Medicine honored our own Ari Johnson, MD, with the Dean’s Community Service Award for his pioneering work in public health with Project Muso. Each year, the Dean grants this award to faculty, staff, trainees, and students in the Harvard medical community who are nominated by their colleagues and advisors.

Our Community Health Workers (CHWs) are extraordinary women who each provide medical services to hundreds—sometimes thousands—of people in their communities. One of their roles is to search actively for malaria cases, diagnose malaria with rapid finger-prick tests, and treat positive tests with three days of malaria pills. Constantly seeking to improve and save more lives, our CHWs organized a Quality Improvement Campaign in March of this year, with dedicated support from Quality Improvement Coordinator Amber Gladney, and Health Program Manager, Dr.

The Center of Expertise on Women’s Health and Empowerment recently named Project Muso one of three research groups in the University of California system to receive a seed grant to continue and enhance our operational research on health and empowerment.  With the award, Project Muso is evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, and impact of our integrated approach to women’s empowerment, particularly looking at microfinance and healthcare delivery.

Last week, the Project Muso team held a workshop on nutrition. We focused this workshop on early childhood nutrition, nutrition for pregnant mothers, and nutrition for breastfeeding mothers and children.

Moise and I found Djeneba Diarra studying in front of the blackboard with her baby, Mawa, beside her. She was practicing writing words with the letter "b" in them. Djeneba never had an opportunity to go to school, but for the past twelve months she has been learning in Project Muso's Women's Education Program, training as a Moishe Community Health Promoter. As part of her training, she has been learning fundamental math and literacy skills.

More than one thousand pediatric doses of artemisin-based combination therapy arrived at the Yirimadjo Health Center in June 2007, to be distributed free of charge to children with malaria under the age of 5. This new policy is a crucial step by the Malian Ministry of Health.

A three-day course of artemisin-based combination therapy can cure malaria, which continues to be a leading cause of child death in Mali. And yet in the months after these life-saving drugs arrived at the Yirimadjo Health Center, their use has been minimal. The current policy provides a plan that goes as far as getting these drugs to Community Health Centers, but what then? What is the system for ensuring that these life-saving tools get from the clinic, up the unpaved dirt roads, and into the homes and hands of all those who need them most, particularly those who are poorest, most vulnerable, and most marginalized from the health system?

To systematically overcome each access barrier that people in Yirimadjo face, we are preparing to launch a Community-Based Malaria Program. This program, which we are developing with the Yirimadjo Health Center, will create a community-based delivery system for bednets that prevent malaria infection and ACT treatment that cures it, ensuring that these tools get to those who need them most, and are used effectively. This system for delivering malaria prevention and treatment tools will also lay the groundwork for delivering other life-saving health resources and care, with the aim of strengthening the health system as a whole.  

This month, Project Muso’s Moishe Community Health Promoters are training in family planning skills. Mali has one of the highest birth rates in the world, and one of the highest child mortality rates in the world. In this context family planning is an issue of great importance to the women who are training in our program.