Healthy Futures for Haiti's Children

Care 2 Communities (C2C) is a Haitian-led organization that serves poor and low-income communities in Haiti who lack access to high-quality healthcare, focusing on women, children, and those suffering from chronic non-communicable diseases. Our model for community-based healthcare leverages the power of collaboration in order to deliver impact: C2C partners with the government to harness the assets of the public sector while integrating best practices and innovation from the private sector to deliver best-in-class, sustainable healthcare services in one of the world’s most challenging health markets. As we expand our work in northern Haiti and pilot an approach for uptake in similar global settings, we invest in an integrated health system instead of disease verticals, focusing on access and standards of care across many health issues. Because of malnutrition’s prevalence in C2C’s partner communities, we continue to provide care for both moderate acute malnutrition and severe acute malnutrition without complications, connecting families to the care they need for good nutrition and healthy communities.

C2C’s malnutrition program targets children aged 6 to 59 months, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers by conducting screenings at all seven operating clinics and at community service delivery points–integrating malnutrition screening across our work to maximize opportunities for case detection and care. Through C2C’s public-private partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, we source and distribute ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), vitamin powder, Vitamin A, and Albendazole for deworming. Our skilled and efficient staff consistently supports the parents of malnourished children by offering tailored advice to promote nutritional recovery, visiting families during the care period, following up on appointments via phone calls or home visits, reducing the risk of complications by demonstrating how to use local food products, and encouraging adherence to RUTF treatment and follow-up appointments.

C2C monitors the impact of our malnutrition intervention through regular supervisory and capacity-building visits with health workers, allowing us to evaluate program implementation on a weekly basis and to help ensure care standards are rigorously applied, patient records and data collection tools are reviewed, and all data are collected and validated.

Some recent achievements include recruiting additional staff (two community health workers and one community health nurse), and providing new staff with ongoing training on administering Vitamin A and deworming, with the support of our partner Vitamin Angels. We continue to conduct systematic malnutrition screening for all children aged 6-59 months at community and institutional levels, search for cases of malnutrition during door-to-door visits and vaccination catch-up sessions, and track cases of program abandonment and missed follow-up appointments. We also broadcast educational videos at clinics, distributed nutrition pamphlets, and conducted educational sessions and community discussions on nutrition and the Haitian food pyramid. Through these interventions, in April-July 2024, we saw 4,870 children under five for the first time, admitting 27 children for severe acute malnutrition without complications and 97 children for moderate acute malnutrition. As communities where we operate continue to face financial and economic hardship and navigate rural out-migration that stresses the health system, investing in a robust network of skilled workers providing quality health care in areas such as malnutrition remains critical to the future of Haiti’s families. Thank you for partnering with C2C toward a healthy future for our neighbors in Haiti.