2020 Annual Report
impact at a glance
In a year that redefined the word “unprecedented”, the meaning of community, and the power of data science and public health, Medic did what we do best: We elevated and adapted. Equipped with our principles of human-centered design, we took initiative to solve for widening gaps in the delivery of care, while sharing our findings broadly and transparently. Like years before, we stood in solidarity with our global team, our open-source community, and health workers around the world, and we doubled-down on our vision to connect every person with quality, dignified care.
Medic is proud to work alongside our global partners every day to support health systems with a new model of care aimed at improving coverage, quality, speed, and equity in hard-to-reach communities. Despite the challenges caused by COVID-19, we are excited to share our 2020 impact and bright future ahead, rooted in our enduring values: humanity, initiative, creativity, openness, and solidarity — that continue to drive us in building tools to support equitable community health systems.
Read our annual report
HUMANITY
Learning from prior experience with major outbreaks and fast-evolving crises, our work in 2020 was grounded in undeniable truths. First, that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the poor and vulnerable and has deepened prevailing inequalities that will be present for years to come. Second, the global community will need to adopt a systems strengthening approach to pandemic response, not only to support immediate needs but also to preserve the gains made to-date in community health and to create more robust, resilient, people-first, and prepared health systems moving forward. Third, response efforts that build on existing platforms, infrastructure, and relationships wherever possible with minimal disruption will have greater success and sustainability long-term.
INITIATIVE
By the end of 2020, the Community Health Toolkit (CHT) supported 34,081 health workers across 16 countries. Onboarding new community health workers (CHWs) required imaginative, collaborative remote training capabilities and support systems, and much of our delivery efforts focused on helping existing networks adapt their primary care protocols to meet the needs of the evolving pandemic and maintain lifesaving care. COVID-19 response systems led to the majority of growth in the global network, and the CHT now supports over 9,477 health workers with systems for disease surveillance, contact tracing, and patient care.
CREATIVITY
This year required urgent, coordinated action to prevent the spread of disease, protect the most vulnerable, and provide immediate care for patients in every corner of the world. Our focus areas and priorities were set by the virus’ timeline, community needs, and evolving global best practices. We took action alongside Ministries of Health (MoH) to lead nationally-coordinated pandemic response efforts, and we evolved existing digital health systems to create and update care protocols. We collaborated with the wider digital health community to ensure efforts were shared rather than duplicated.
OPENNESS
We built on existing platforms, reused app code and design, and co-developed a community of practice centered on creating efficient systems for sharing resources. We designed and developed a set of modular tools powered by the CHT that work as an integrated platform to onboard, train, task, supervise, and support health workers as they engage in COVID-19 preparedness, surveillance, and response efforts – all while delivering routine community health services. CHT apps can be quickly configured, deployed, and scaled for specific partner needs and, importantly, have helped mitigate the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 at the last mile.
SOLIDARITY
Along with huge challenges, 2020 brought forward accelerated opportunities for collaboration across the community health and digital health ecosystems. Our ever-present guiding light is to build and support the CHT as a thriving community, global good, and go-to platform for community health adopted by governments globally to support care for everyone, everywhere, always. We continue to evolve to serve our mission and deliver on our commitment to quality, focus on building and expanding our community, conduct effective research that informs the fields of community and digital health, and better plan for our work and capacity.
We invite you to download the full 2020 Annual Report and dive into the details of a whirlwind year, exploring our big wins, big adaptations, and even bigger global collaborations. We’re so grateful to continue this journey with you, in solidarity with our community, and in service of health workers.
