Colombia

ON THE FRONTLINE: Lessons on health worker empowerment through the COVID-19 pandemic response

Around the world,frontline and community health workers serve to connecthealth services, commodities, and informationwiththose who need them. Equippedwith the relevant skills and community trust, theycanstrengthen health systems by bridginggeographic and financial accessibility gaps for rural, hard-to-reach, and vulnerable populations through last-mile health delivery. When integrated into national and local healthcare systems, community health workers can additionally help patients navigate complex systems of care and ensure care continuity across services. Historically during times of health crises, global governments and organizations have often relied on community health workforces as frontline responders to deliver life-saving care to disproportionate l y affected populations. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was no exception, with many countries mobilizing their existing community health worker programs or initiating new ones to assist with pandemic response . Leveraging lessons learned through its decades long support and implementation of frontline and community health worker initiatives across 60 countries, CARE developed guidelines for community-level pandemic response and disease prevention during this time. In June 2020, CARE partnered with Abbott to launch a one-year in-depth primary care response to the COVID-19 pandemic Read More...

Colombia: Vouchers for Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) Services

This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.” As a result of Venezuela’s socioeconomic and political crisis, there have been massive migratory flows of people from Venezuela into Colombia.1 According to the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants, as of May 2020 over 1.76 million Venezuelans had fled to Colombia with many continuing to walk to and across the Southern Border with Ecuador as caminantes.

CARE Colombia began direct operations in the country in 2019, focusing primarily on the needs of Venezuelan
refugees and migrants in Pamplona, Norte de Santander and, later, Bucaramanga, Santander. Cash and Voucher
Assistance then (CVA) are primary modalities for CARE Colombia, particularly for its SRHR and protection portfolio.
Working with populations on the move as was was the case in this program, together with high levels of unmet SRHR needs resulted in a unique operating environment for a voucher intervention supporting SRHR programming.
This case study focuses on the design of the programming only. Due to the timing of the review, no substantive data on the user experience of the vouchers or outcomes could be captured. Read More...

CASH AND VOUCHER ASSISTANCE FOR SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS LEARNINGS FROM ECUADOR, COLOMBIA, LEBANON, AND SOMALIA

CARE is committed to ensuring that projects with cash and voucher assistance (CVA) are designed with and for women and girls, addressing recipients’ needs, challenges, and opportunities. CARE has invested in research on how to make CVA work for women and girls through gender-sensitive approaches to framing processes and outcomes of the modalities. As a widely accepted method of increasing access to services and improving autonomy, dignity, and resilience, programming with CVA has been integrated into numerous sectors to improve the lives of displaced communities, particularly the most underserved. To date, CARE’s CVA has primarily been used for food security and livelihood outcomes and multisectoral outcomes via multipurpose cash (MPC) transfers. Now, aligned with its strategic intent, CARE is investing in sectoral areas where CVA is less often used and that are of primary interest for women and girls, including gender-based violence (GBV) response and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

Building on extensive experience with CVA and SRHR programming, CARE conducted a study to investigate how outcomes for the pilot initiatives using CVA for SRHR compare to global learnings, and to identify opportunities for strengthening and expanding pilots for long-term programming. The study reviewed programming in four contexts (Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Somalia). The initial study was undertaken by two consultants, one focused on Lebanon and Somalia and one focused on Colombia and Ecuador. Data collection included 25 remote key informant interviews (KIIs) with CARE staff at the global and country levels as well as staff from partner organizations, followed by After Action Reviews with each country team and a validation meeting. All activities were undertaken in either English or Spanish and transcripts were analyzed using data analysis software. Analysis was conducted both by country and across contexts to identify commonalities and thematic learning, mostly led by CARE technical advisors. Read More...

Latin America & Caribbean: Venezuelan Migrants & Refugees in Colombia

This Rapid Gender Analysis provides preliminary information and observations on the different needs, capacities and coping strategies of Venezuelan migrant and refugee women, men, boys, and girls in Colombia. It seeks to understand how gender roles and relations have changed as a result of the crisis and share recommendations for how the humanitarian community can more effectively consider these changing dynamics to better meet the different needs of women, men, boys and girls of different ages, abilities and other contextually relevant forms of diversity. Read More...

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