EmilyTav's blog

If you had to guess, what country would you say is the world leader in health innovation? According to Richard Bartlett, it’s India — thanks to a flexible regulatory environment, a government that is open to partnerships, and a dramatic need for low-cost health care options.

As he shares in this #innovatehealth interview, Rwanda and Kenya are also at the top of his list:

As we continue to explore reverse innovation in health and health care, we talked with Donika Dimovska and Rose Reis at the Center for Health Market Innovations about their new report, Highlights: 2011. The report offers insights into market-based health programs, including:

• Five health models emerging around the world during the past decade.
• Six ways enterprises, NGOs, and others can mobilize private providers to deliver better care through franchising, high-volume specialty hospitals, and other commercial models.
• Five approaches to expand access and give purchasing power to the poor, including government insurance programs, contracting with the private sector, and mHealth savings.
• An analysis of how information technology can be effectively utilized in health care, presenting six key reasons why technology can improve access, quality, and efficiency.
• Clear, quantifiable ways to report program performance in a simple and transparent way.
• How to connect to CHMI hubs in 16 countries around the world.

Listen to this conversation about reverse innovation, and some of the highlights of this new report.

Changemakers caught up recently with two of the co-founders of the Fast Forward Health film festival: Andre Blackman and David Haddad. You can listen in on our conversation about innovations in health care and the film festival they launched in Washington D.C. this year:  

And if you're strapped for time, here's a quick overview of the conversation:

Earlier this month, we announced the winners of the Making More Health competition, sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim:

• ColaLife (Zambia)
• United for Sight (Ghana)
• Saúde Criança (Brazil) 

While we learned a great deal from (and about) these incredible innovators through the competition, we wanted to learn more. And what better way to learn, than to speak directly with the brains of the operations themselves?

Changemakers brought together the three winners of this competition on Google+ Hangout to hear more about their work, and to give them an opportunity to connect with each other. These teams have been doing incredible work -- take a listen:

There is only one day left to vote for your favorite innovators in citizen media. We've made it as easy as pie (pumpkin pie!) to learn more about the 11 finalists — Storify lays out a quick description and a one-minute video about each media solution.

The Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media competition (sponsored by Google) has attracted the attention and support of leaders in the citizen media space. One of the competition judges, Sanjana Hattotuwa, has dedicated himself to the complex (and often risky) field of citizen media in war-torn Sri Lanka. 

Save the date! 

"Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media . . . Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them." – British Prime Minister David Cameron

Blackberry Messenger was used as a highly-effective tool for organizing the recent riots in London and creating mass chaos, along with Facebook and Twitter.

But Twitter was also used to organize a resistance movement (#riotcleanup) that coordinated crowds of citizens from the riot-affected areas. Citizens who were outraged by the violence came together to clean up the damage. The effort was a local action that turned into a movement; with the broom as its symbol, the cleanup campaign spread across the country as quickly as the riots did, thanks to . . . social media.

I realize it is slightly ludicrous to discuss “social media” in an anthropomorphic sense. Social media is a tool used by people, and can be used in any number of ways, from organizing weeks of peaceful protests that led to the collapse of the Mubarak regime to organizing destructive riots that set fire to London for days. Yet as I watched the coverage of the events in London I couldn’t help but picture social media like this:  

A big thank you to the more than 50 Twitterers who joined @Changemakers for a #SocEntChat about Citizen Media on July 14! It was one of our most lively and energetic Twitter chats to date.
 
For those of you who are interested in citizen media, and related questions about how media and technology are intersecting with our daily lives, here are a few of my favorite thought-provoking and inspiring videos on the topic:

When the iPad was first released, there were “only” about 10,000 apps available. Now there are more than 90,000 ... and counting.

So, as you can imagine, when I brought home my iPad, I was a little overwhelmed. I don’t know what I was expecting — where was the #socent app section?! 

Needless to say, I was determined to populate my iPad with apps that were relevant to me and our work here at Changemakers. So, after some digging, a few disappointments, and maybe one too many levels of Angry Birds, I present to you: the top 10 apps for social entrepreneurs.

[Editor's note: Terra Nova, along with the two other winners in our Property Rights competition, are at a World Bank event today to share the innovative work that distinguished them from a pool of more than 210 entries from around the world.]

Brazil. Land Rights. Poverty. 

What picture do these words bring to mind?

For many, it conjures up City of God-like images of crowded violent favelas and communities living in chaos. With over 12 million Brazilians living in 3.2 million informal dwellings without access to public services, that dark visualization wouldn’t be far from the truth.

Yet to Andre Albuquerque, founder of Terra Nova and winner of the Property Rights: Identity, Dignity & Opportunity for All competition, it means much more – it means hope.   

Meet the winners of the Changemakers property rights competition!
 
Throughout the Property Rights: Identity, Dignity & Opportunity for All competition, the Changemakers community submitted ideas on how to improve access to property rights around the world. 

If you work in the field of international development, chances are you have heard of Devex. What I bet you didn’t know is that it is a social enterprise – this was news to me as well.

Raj Kumar, founder and President, evolved from political consultant to entrepreneur when he identified a gap in the development market. In 2000, Kumar launched Devex as a student project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Today, Devex has become the largest provider of business intelligence and recruitment services to the development community – serving a majority of the world’s leading donor agencies, companies, NGOs and development professionals.