Recent Projects

Through the support of Grand Challenges, Canada, Elementos has developed a tablet-based application to improve child health and development in distant communities of the Amazon. The CHEST App is a mobile multi-media teaching and surveillance tool provided to community health agents to support them during their home visits with caregivers. The tools improves their ability to teach parents healthy practices for early childhood development, nutrition, and disease control. 

Contracted by the Universidade de São Paulo, Elementos assisted in the design and implementation of a three-phase project to improve the impact of the national home visitation program, Programa Criança Feliz. Elementos assisted on the design of an implementation research study to identify barriers to impact of the program. The team designed implementation strategies and key adaptations to the program to address the barriers and improve implementation and scale. The implementation strategy bundles were then tested in a large-scale feasibility study, and then a tested for effectiveness in nation-wide hybrid-effectiveness RCT.  

Elementos partnered with the Harvard University and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte to conduct a scoping review on The WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist to improve the quality and safety of intrapartum care. The review focused on implementation strategies and their relationship with adoption and fidelity 

Elementos is proud to share the animated videos created by our Research Team. The videos teach and promote some of the most important topics for child health and development in the Peruvian Amazon. The videos will be shown in the CHEST App by the community health agents during their home visit and various training and capacity-building workshops with caregivers and health agents. You can see the videos on our youtube channel and download the videos to share in your own workshops. 

The specialists at Elementos have come together to create a dynamic guide book for community health agents to use during their home visits. The book includes an agenda to determine which health messages should be presented during each home visit. It includes clear and concise messages to read with the caregivers and images to guide the conversation. The topics include; nutrition, breastfeeding, sanitation, disease prevention, early childhood development, and maternal health. The book is available for download and use in other programs. Contact Elementos if you would like to adapt the guidebook for community health agent programs in other regions.  

The research team at Elementos created the material and methodology to conduct performance evaluations of community health agent programs. The tools were applied to a community health worker program in 3 districts of Loreto. The results were used to improve program performance for maternal and child health. The evaluation tools are now available through the publication. 

Elementos conducted research to further understand the barriers of use of local health services for maternal and child health.  The study provides valuable insight into the use of local health services and the common perspectives that are hindering further uptake at the community level in the Amazon of Peru, with important implications for health policy.