Caryl Feldacker, PhD, MPH, has over 20 years of international experience focused on ensuring quality public health programming and rigorous program monitoring and evaluation (M&E), including more than 10 years conducting HIV-related implementation science (IS) research in sub-Saharan Africa. Her current NIH-funded research focuses on applying IS and human-centered design (HCD) principles to implement digital health innovations aimed at improving the quality of patient care while reducing provider workload and program costs in routine low- and middle-income settings. For each initiative, she partners closely with Ministries of Health and local partners with the aim of helping strengthen M&E and research capacity for sustained improvement. Her digital health interventions employ the open-source Community Health Toolkit in collaboration with technology steward, Medic. Results from these collaborations demonstrate safety of the two-way, text-based (2wT) approach for male circumcision (MC) follow-up, reducing healthcare worker burden with high usability and lower cost. 2wT for MC is now scaling nationally in Zimbabwe. New projects aim at establishing an offline-first mobile electronic medical record and applying the 2wT approach to improve retention in ART care both at Lighthouse Trust in Lilongwe Malawi. Other current collaborations using IS and HCD approaches include partnerships with Aurum Institute on 2wT for MC follow-up in South Africa and 2wT for both MC and ART in collaboration with Zimbabwe Technical Assistance, Training and Education Centre for Health – ZIM-TTECH (Harare, Zimbabwe). For more information, check out publications here or contact directly: cfeld@uw.edu.
Using digital technologies to improve healthcare delivery