Training family caregivers to help their loved ones heal

Problem

Around the world, health systems are under-resourced and direly overstretched, unable to meet patient demands and needs. We know this problem will only get worse — globally, we’re likely to face a shortage of 18 million healthcare providers by 2030. Staffs have little time to focus on tasks outside of urgent medical treatment, spending less than a few minutes conveying care instructions. As a result, patients and their loved ones often leave health facilities with the implicit responsibility of ensuring recovery, yet without the basic lifesaving information to do so. In South Asia alone, nearly 1.5 million children under five die every year from causes that could be averted through health practices actionable at home. Family members and other loved ones frequently play a central role in improving health outcomes but are not formally recognized, valued, or prepared under the current system.

Big Idea

Noora Health knows that, given proper recognition and support, patients and caregivers can dramatically impact health outcomes — reducing preventable complications, avoidable readmissions and mortality. Over six years, Noora will reach more than 70 million caregivers across India and Bangladesh, where they already work, and expand to Indonesia and Nepal. Noora’s Care Companion Program (CCP) will equip patients and their loved ones with lifesaving caregiving skills, leading to a 20 to 50% reduction in complications and readmission rates. They will leverage the massive scale of government healthcare systems to embed CCP into their practices, training healthcare staff to readily transfer skills to caregivers. This will maximize the time healthcare workers spend with patients and improve positive outcomes across various illnesses. 

Plan

Noora Health’s Care Companion Program leverages both existing healthcare infrastructure and technology to equip families to care for loved ones. The program has been adapted for several major medical conditions, including maternal and newborn care, cardiology and cardiac surgery, oncology care, general medical and surgical care, tuberculosis and COVID-19. It works in four  steps: (1) First, Noora Health partners with state and national healthcare systems to implement CCP in their facilities; (2) They train “Master Trainers,” three to four health providers at each facility who become local champions of CCP; (3) Noora supports healthcare staff to train family caregivers, providing condition-specific, skills-based sessions as they wait in facility wards, halls or waiting rooms; (4) Finally, they reinforce caregiver behavior with remote engagement services, supplementing sessions with reminders, educational content and live chat support, typically through WhatsApp. Noora Health will continue to build its library of culturally relevant and evidence-based training curricula, making it publicly available and enabling healthcare systems in new geographies to implement and adapt the model.

Why will this succeed?

Noora’s CCP program has trained nearly two million caregivers, through partnerships with six Indian states and the national government of Bangladesh. The program, which is currently available in 300+ health facilities, is proven to increase health behavior adoption, reduce anxiety for family caregivers and improve health outcomes for patients across various medical conditions. Research indicates that Noora Health’s programs reduce newborn readmissions by 56% and post-surgery cardiac complications by 71%. Bringing this program to scale will have an incredible impact, for healthcare systems as well as individual families.