Designing for Better Health: Simple Solutions Nudging Extraordinary Change

A simple piece of cloth or a heap of compost can redirect the course of a community's health and wellbeing. 

Not Just a Piece of Cloth and Healthy Amazon, two winners from this year's Designing for Better Health competition, are demonstrating how everyday items can drastically improve access to wholesome foods and lifesaving hygiene.

Millions of women in the slums of India are forced to endure their menstrual cycles cloaked in shame. Without access to clean cloth and sanitary pads, many women put their bodies and lives at risk, using old rags, newspaper, and often nothing at all.  

For just 11 cents each, GOONJ produces clean sanitary napkins out of donated bits of cloth, and teaches local women how to properly make their own. One hundred thousand pads are made each month, freeing roughly 20,000 women from yet another month of neglect and silence. GOONJ, founded by Ashoka Fellow, Anshu Gupta, aims to combat this issue by shattering society's beliefs. The organization has called on schools, hospitals, and community leaders to recognize the impact their recycled cloth can have on the lives of so many women.

In Peru, another movement is underway that will clean up a city and keep food on the table for thousands of people. San Francisco Saludable's Healthy Amazon initiative is implementing a community-driven waste management system designed to separate trash and use the organic waste as compost for growing vegetables in family gardens.

Before the Healthy Amazon campaign, the city of San Francisco de Yarinacocha in the Peruvian Amazon lacked an organized waste management system, and its citizens survived on a diet that included few vegetables. In just one year, 2,000 people have benefited from the program. Instead of burning and tossing their trash, 95% of the community is now actively involved in sorting garbage into recyclables, organic waste, and non-reusable materials.

San Francisco Saludable continues to educate members of the community, and hopes the second layer of its program, cultivating family gardens, will improve the diets of 500 children. By providing free compost collected from the waste management system, the organization hopes to design a plan that will keep nutrition and sanitation in a constant, healthy cycle.

For more inspiring ideas for better health, check out the other entries and finalists in the competition.