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30/09/2009
About us
Welcome to the AH-SCD* blog !
* Access to healthcare and socio-cultural determinants.
The rhythm of humanitarian action, with its plethora of constraints, priorities, logical frameworks, indicators and impatience to act effectively, imposes a breakneck pace leaving little time for observation and questioning.
However, our experiences as humanitarian workers show that access to care for our programme beneficiaries depends on norms, values, knowledge and practices related to health. Disease, as well as being biological, also has social and cultural facets. Since disease and its causes are interpreted differently according to context, it is crucial to become familiar with other people’s cultures in order to offer them appropriate healthcare.
Faced with people of different beliefs and practices to our own, we have all questioned ourselves at one time or another on the attitude to adopt and the limitations and impact of our work and programmes.
The main elements of the AH-SCD project – as reflected in this blog - are awareness-raising, training and developing the tools required to better take these determinants into account during the formulation, management and evaluation of projects.
We also aim to provide a space for information, questions, discovery and the exchange of knowledge/practices/ideas/tools, etc. We are counting on you to make our blog active and lively!
ABOUT US
>The Working Group
This group has been set up to offer a range of different skills (anthropology, health, project methodology and planning, communication and training).
There is also a broader working group for anyone interested in devoting his/her time and skills to this project and receiving regular e-mail updates on progress.
> Background
The AH-SCD* project proposes to tackle the issue of socio-cultural determinants of access to healthcare.
The project ties in with other reflections already undertaken at MdM including, amongst others, the work being done by the Ethnic Minorities Group, tools developed for community health programmes and field deliberations on user participation in MdM programmes.
The need to look into this matter was expressed in 2006 by the field coordinators of the Latin American and Caribbean Group (LACG). Their questions gave rise to a series of surveys carried out on the healthcare pathways adopted by programme beneficiaries in the continent. Following the presentation of the survey results in May 2007, the working group, driven by the LACG, created a cross-cutting project which later expanded to include other MdM France continental/thematic groups and departments, such as the Technical Support Unit, the Communication department, the training department, the Emergency Desk, etc.
> Project aims
The “Access to healthcare and socio-cultural determinants” project aims to stimulate dialogue on this issue and encourage documentation and dissemination of best practices and lessons learned amongst today’s and tomorrow’s humanitarian and international aid actors. It also aims to develop planning tools to gradually improve the inclusion of the socio-cultural determinants of access to healthcare in the definition and implementation of projects in an effort to improve the quality of our programmes.
The project is based on three priority aims:
- Raising awareness amongst aid workers, present and future, on the effects of socio-cultural determinants on access to healthcare.
- Creating dialogue and capitalising on practices between aid actors.
- Strengthening aid actors’ competences by ensuring that the effects of SCD on access to healthcare are taken into account in their daily practices and project planning.
Amongst its achievements to date are:
- The development of a conceptual framework, a document setting out the theoretical basis of the issue and detailing definitions of the topics addressed
- A “pilot” training session on programme planning integrating a module on “socio-cultural determinants”
- Organisation of an awareness-raising workshop for MdM coordinators during the association’s mission days
- Partnership with the Health Chair at Sciences Po Paris for the introduction of debating evenings by 2009
- The integration of an anthropologist to the Technical Support Unit of Médecins du Monde on a part-time basis
- Development of methodology tools (see toolbox)
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