Earlier this year, our previous Board Chair, Chelsea Takamine, stepped down from her role. We thank her for her service!
Please help us welcome our new Board Chair, Jan Baskin! Jan took over the position officially in August and presided over her first board meeting a couple weeks ago. She joined HAC as a board member last year.
Click here to read Jan’s full CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janbaskinstrategicimprovement
“As the chairperson of Lwabalega, I coordinate the HAC outreach clinics in our community. Before Health Access Connect, people were badly off and used to spend a lot of money going for health services.
It used to take a full day to get treatment plus the cost of transport to the clinic and back — 15,000 Ugandan shillings to go and again 15,000 Ugandan shillings to return.
Health Access Connect helped people so much because a person can be working at the lake, and then he comes up to the clinic, visits with a health worker, gets his treatments and medications right here and goes back to the lake. Instead of spending 30,000 Ugandan shillings, he spends 2,000, and is taken care of in one hour instead of the whole day.”
– Saazi Francis Salongo, Chairperson of Lwabalega, Fisherman, & Farmer,
Lwabalega, Uganda
In preparation for the meeting, Executive Director Kevin Gibbons and Monitoring & Evaluation Officer Bridget Nanyonjo met with district health leaders from HAC partner clinics that would be attending the meeting in order to have a more in depth discussion with them one on one. Bridget is seen above with female health workers at HAC partner Health Centre 3 Bwendero in the first photo. In the second photo, Kevin is meeting with Jimmy Kazibwe, Clinical Officer at Health Centre 3 Mugoye.
HAC outreach clinic sign outside of the Stakeholders Workshop which was hosted at the HAC partner organization KAFOPHAN office in Kalangala town on Buggala Island.
Miiro “Mpola Mpola” Deo, HAC Field Officer, Kalangala, helps to lead main discussions about, past and current successes and lessons to be learned for areas for improvement in the HAC model with district health leaders, HAC field staff, and other community members.
Livingstone Musoke, a counselor with HAC partner organization Kalangala Comprehensive Public Health Services Project, presents on his experience working with HAC outreach clinics and the positive responses and impacts in remote villages.
Meeting participants are divided into teams of community members, health workers, and partners to discuss their unique challenges from their perspectives and brainstorm solutions.
Motorcycle taxi driver Mike Nsubuga explains some of the problems and solutions from the community perspective. Many groups stressed the importance of keeping time and improving coordination between health workers and community members.
Kalangala District HIV Focal Person Dr. Edward Muwanga discusses how the difficulties of medicine stockouts and staff limitations at the health facilities can interrupt outreach clinic activities.
Scovia Namaganda, in-charge of Health Centre 3 Bwendero, discusses the challenges that she and her colleagues have faced in bringing care to remote villages and gives some ideas for how HAC and community members can help make their work easier, specifically with improved coordination and giving health workers their travel allowances on time.
I’m currently interning at Health Access Connect for 3 months through a study and work abroad program called Insight Global Education. My coursework as a Global Public Health and History major at NYU has sparked an intense curiosity in me and has called me to a career in social impact. The study of public health is interdisciplinary and covers diverse sectors including health sciences, statistics, environmental health, business, policy, and much more. I’m on a journey of discovering not only which areas best suits my interests, but I am also devoted to discovering where I can have the most impact. At Health Access Connect, I’ve been given the opportunity to involve myself in a variety of tasks to help the organization and gain more clarity into what careers I might pursue. At a month and half in, I’ve taken an interest in development/fundraising and program management as I’ve witnessed the necessity to support more small community-based nonprofits like Health Access Connect that work to build local capacity.
So what do I actually do?! I spend most days at the HAC office in Kampala learning how to work in various databases and management softwares, including Salesforce, The Non-Profit Leadership Lab, Grant Station, and Asana. Managing a small and growing organization is not easy! Kevin Gibbons and I then figure out how we can use these tools to improve HAC’s ability to fundraiser, oversee staff, and serve people in the remote communities where we work. Intermixed with this are field visits to the communities were HAC works, various small administrative tasks, social media management, and attending networking meetings. I’ve even been able to work on my first grant application, and I’m loving it! I’m learning so much working at HAC, and I’m so lucky to have the opportunity to find my passion so I can have a successful and well thought out career. I’ve got another month and a half left in Kampala and I can’t wait to see what else is to come!
We are excited to share HAC’s Annual Report for 2017! Read the full report here: HAC Annual Report 2017.
Letter from the Executive Director
2017 was an eventful and challenging year for Health Access Connect. We received a
$50,000 grant from ViiV Healthcare’s Positive Action Challenges. That’s a real validation of
our model! We started expansion activities to reach new villages and health facilities in new
districts, but it was slow going. That’s a problem! Our vision is to spread mobile outreach
clinic services all over Uganda and possibly beyond, but to do that we need to be able to
reach new villages quickly. So what was the holdup?!
1. We were too reliant on community groups. Community groups were at the center
of our model for coordination and oversight of the outreach clinics, but we were
running into a variety of problems: groups fell apart, chairpersons were not around,
members had disagreements and disbanded, groups were not meeting or discussing
anything, and so on. After seeing these problems arise again and again, we decided
to just work with community health workers (VHTs) to do the outreach clinic
oversight, and this adjustment has made a huge difference!
2. We were spending too long talking about outreach clinics before starting them.
We spent a lot of time going back and forth to villages to explain and re-explain how
the outreach clinics work. Sometimes attendance would be poor. Other times people
needed to be reminded. It was kind of like explaining a game over and over again: it
is not clear how it works until you see it — you need to just start and play! Now our
Field Officers go into a village just three or four times before outreach clinics begin.
3. We needed to hire more staff. For our outreach clinics to expand, our organization
must expand. Duh! We need more people going to the villages, going back and forth
with health workers, and doing the day-to-day work of making outreach clinics work.
We have hired an M&E Officer and an additional Field Officer, and we are planning
on hiring at least three new staff in the first months of 2018. Onward!
4. We need to use our connections to start working in new districts sooner. One
major holdup was getting approval from district government officials. We brought and
discussed out MOU, but getting people to sign was not straightforward. Government
officials would ask, “Who are you? Where have you worked?” We took for granted
that this was an easy, rubber-stamp process, but we needed to explain ourselves
better to government officials. After some meetings with our management team and
calls with our partners in Kalangala District, officials signed the MOU enthusiastically!
By the end of 2017, we were serving nine villages. By the end of 2018, we hope to be
serving 35 villages. We’re looking forward to a big year!
Sincerely,
Kevin Gibbons
Executive Director
Today we are announcing the appointment of Jan Baskin to our Board of Directors.
Jan Baskin is a globally recognized expert in marketing communications and business growth, turn-around, and sustainability. She has established a proven reputation for successfully introducing new products and services, turning stagnant or lackluster parts of businesses into vital ones, and handling crisis situations. During her tenures at St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation in Tampa, Florida, and 11 years at AT&T, including service as Vice President of Public Relations for AT&T and AT&T Canada, Jan increased assets by millions. At Florida Hospital Carrollwood, she was part of a team that created a new approach to healthcare delivery in Tampa. She focused on the federally-mandated Community Health Plan, creating unique, life-changing, innovative, and landmark programs throughout the community. Her creation of the nationally-recognized and innovative Food Is Medicine program, a model for collective impact, has resulted in substantive health improvements.
“The mission of Health Access Connect and its commitment to improving and saving lives resonates deeply with me,” Jan Baskin said. “It is an honor to join with this organization to help it grow and continue to save and improve the lives of those without access to healthcare.”
She currently chairs and serves on several health-related boards and committees in the Tampa Bay area, throughout Florida, and at the national and global levels. She earned her degree at The Ohio State University with a focus on Sino/Soviet Relations and minors in Russian and Chinese languages. She is a popular speaker, focusing on motivation, strategic business growth, collective impact, and the social side of business.
“We are thrilled that Jan Baskin has joined the Health Access Connect Advisory Board. By expanding the board with members of such outstanding contributions, like Jan, HAC is assured of achieving its strategic goals of substantially increasing our outreach to the farming communities we serve,” said Kevin Gibbons, Executive Director.
You can read more in our press release: HAC Board Member Jan Baskin Press Relsease 2017-10-23 (doc).
We’ve just released our 2016 Annual Report subtitled “Revving Up Our Partners, Gearing Up For Growth.” You can expect more motorcycle puns!
Our impacts in 2016:
In 2016, HAC helped to
Not bad for our first full year of running the clinics! Read more by downloading our HAC Annual Report 2016 (pdf).
Kalangala is a small lakeside town on one of the Ssese Islands on Lake Victoria. It is still part of Uganda, and it’s its own kind of beautiful. There’s about one main road, a handful of roadside shops, and a small market where one may buy bananas, plantains, sweet potatoes, corn flour, onions, tomatoes, beans, and meat. The land was rich in trees and so much green I had almost forgotten what a forest looked like in person. I felt small in comparison to the extent of the land I viewed as we rode up the copper-red dirt hills to our accommodation that evening. We went to dinner shortly thereafter and to bed following that. We had a big day planned for the next morning.
The next morning we rode on the back of a motorcycle for 45 minutes to our first stop: Bungo village. The buildings in Bungo were mostly made of wood or mud with corrugated iron sheets for roofs. Most doors consisted of a curtain of a sheet of fabric, or actual doors were made of the same board wood as the walls.
The homes and the community had a lot of personality. They are filled with families and children’s giggles — at least this was the case when I came around.
There was one well pump in the village where the people fill their plastic jugs with water, and filled my day with this young girl’s smile:
I also saw where the fishermen build their boats. I have come to admire the fact that many people here are quite knowledgeable in a variety of trades and handy work.
These men were preoccupied and productive in their work as I observed and admired their craftsmanship. It seemed to be a long-time developed true skill of theirs. I noticed that the edge of the lake closest to where the village was settled, boats and nets that the professional fisherman here utilized, were ready to go for a day’s work. Men of all ages seemed to be working, as I stood on the edge of the lake.
Although my visit in Bungo was short, I believe I will hold this first experience with me for a very long time. Though this village was from other communities, residents seemed very close to one another. The children played together, the men worked together, and the women who I met during one of the Focus Groups were all accepting to each other’s opinions and what they were trying to communicate. I thought to myself that we were not so different, after all.
I learned that it’s not easy to tackle the obstacle that accessibility puts between these communities and their rights to proper health care, education and all else. I learned that these people are insightful and fully aware to what is beyond their range, and many of these people are willing to work together to access their basic needs. access their basic needs. This echoed in my thoughts for days after my visit. I would love to sit here and say that in this day and age, ‘access to basic services’ shouldn’t be a topic of discussion or even an issue that is currently not being addressed in many parts of the world. The truth is that it is real, and it is happening. I am honestly grateful that Health Access Connect can provide even a little peace of mind to these people, where they don’t have to stress and worry about whether they have enough money to get their medications this month. I’m thankful that HAC is making a change in a way that some of these parents don’t have to choose between getting medications for their children this month or to allow them to stay home from school because they’re ill and cannot afford a long and expensive trip to the nearest clinic (even on a motorcycle).
The community is growing and changing for the better each day, I can feel it.
Hello! My name is Miranda, and I’m in my second year at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. My passion for global health has lead me to take courses in both Health Sciences and International Studies. I’m currently doing a program called Semester in Development which gives students the opportunity to live, work, and study in Uganda. While taking courses at Makerere University, I am also a proud intern at Health Access Connect.
I have certainly enjoyed being in Uganda so far, and helping with Health Access Connect has made it even more amazing. Recently, Kevin and I traveled over to Kalangala to meet up with Mpola Mpola and prepare to work with more villages. This is the kind of work I absolutely love doing. On his boda boda, Mpola Mpola has taken us all over the island to record GPS points of the villages we visited and the roads we took to get to them.
We went up and down many hills, giving us beautiful views of Lake Victoria; we went through countless palm trees, where the palm fruits grow and palm oil is produced; and we drove through a very flooded road. The villages are very far from each other and even farther from the clinics. There are so many ways in which the medicycle program would make such a huge impact for the people living in each of the communities.
For me, the most interesting part of this trip has been sitting in on the initial meetings with community members. Although I can’t understand what anyone is saying because I know almost no Luganda, it’s very interesting to be there and see relationships being built. Mpola Mpola is incredibly good at communicating with everyone, telling stories, explaining the benefits of partnering with Health Access Connect, and answering questions.
My interests are public health and community development, so it’s really neat to see something so innovative and relevant to the lives of people in Kalangala. Hopefully I’ll be able to join Kevin for field work at least one more time. I’ve met some amazing people, played with some great kids, and have seen the things I learn about in school being applied to real life. I love it here in Kalangala, but I do look forward to heading back to Kampala and working on more things to help Health Access Connect grow and reach more people.
