Our work began in Liberia’s remote, last mile communities, and is now growing globally. We’re partnering with countries to design and build community-based primary health systems. Together, we link community health workers with nurses, doctors, and midwives at community clinics. We train and support these teams of community and frontline health workers to bring life-saving services—from vaccines to maternal and neonatal care—to the doorsteps of people living far from care.
Our mission is to save lives in the world’s most remote communities.
Our vision is a health worker within reach of everyone, everywhere.
Last Mile Health is founded by Liberian civil war survivors and American health workers under the name Tiyatien Health, which means “justice in health” in a local dialect.
Fueled by the belief that no patient should be out of reach, our founders launch Liberia’s first rural, public HIV treatment program with only $6,000, raised during Raj Panjabi and Amisha Raja’s wedding. In 2010, we partnered with the Government of Liberia and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria to replicate our HIV treatment model in 19 public clinics across 12 of Liberia’s 15 counties.
We realize that to reach patients living in remote communities, we need to serve them directly in their homes. We partner with the Government of Liberia to pilot a community health worker program in Konobo District—one of the poorest and hardest-to-reach regions in the country. In just one year, teams of community and frontline health workers achieve 100% coverage of the district—resulting in an increase in clinic-based skilled birth attendance from 55% to 84%.
Encouraged by the results of the program in Konobo District, Liberia’s Ministry of Health invites us to replicate our community health worker program across Rivercess County as a pilot for nationwide scale.
In partnership with the Government of Liberia between 2014-2015, we train more than 1,300 health workers and community members to rapidly educate communities, refer patients to care, and contain the spread of Ebola. Primary health services, which had all but shut down across Liberia, are never disrupted in the communities where we work.
We collaborate with Liberia’s Ministry of Health and partners to design and launch the National Community Health Assistant Program to extend primary healthcare to 1.2 million people living at Liberia’s last mile.
Last Mile Health Co-Founder and former CEO, Dr. Raj Panjabi, accepts the 2017 TED Prize and gives a TED Talk announcing plans to launch the Community Health Academy. Leveraging open-source digital tools that improve the efficacy and efficiency of training, the Academy partners with Ministries of Health to strengthen the clinical skills of community health workers and the capacity of health systems leaders to build systems that deliver quality care.
Photo Credit: Bret Hartman/TED
A controlled study in Rivercess County, where we have worked since 2016, demonstrates an increase in children receiving malaria, pneumonia, and diarrhea treatment by over 40%.
The FY20-23 strategic plan is launched, outlining our commitment to build and strengthen three national community health workforces to reach over 9 million people in Africa and serve as global exemplars, and to share our best practices and lessons learned so that other countries can do the same.
Over 16,000 frontline health workers and health systems leaders across 182 countries enroll in the Academy’s first leadership course, Strengthening Community Health Worker Programs to Deliver Primary Health Care, which is co-produced with edX and HarvardX.
As the Government of Malawi implements a bold new National Community Health Strategy, we’re supporting them to ensure the program delivers essential primary health services to every person – no matter where they live. By 2023, the government’s National Community Health Strategy aims to deploy 16,000 community and frontline health workers to serve the approximately 15 million people living in rural and remote communities across Malawi.
We launch a comprehensive effort to support governments and local partners to deploy community and frontline health workers to safely prevent, detect, and respond to the coronavirus, while ensuring patients have uninterrupted access to primary healthcare.
