By Brian Skeele, on April 19th, 2011
What’s a sustainable lifestyle without affordable healthcare??? Just as we’re called upon to re-innovate our neighborhoods sustainable, so are we challenged to bring creativity to healthcare.
1st we create a healthy lifestyle! With a mixed use, mixed income community, we get a pedestrian centered way of life, where we walk to many of our daily tasks. The shorter commute and more affordable lifestyle makes for less stress. More exercise, less stress, means less need for healthcare over one’s lifespan. Just the act of living is preventative medicine!!!
Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his innovation in creating micro-credit programs for poor women and now he’s bringing innovation in healthcare to impoverished women as well.
His program, Grameen Healthcare is designed for low-cost, affordable health services for all of Bangladesh, especially the lowest income women and children, and sustain these services thru social business. Whereas the program is 90% self supportive, Yunus believes it will become completely self supportive!
“We are excited to support the Grameen Nurse Institute, a breakthrough social business model that could transform the health care industry by positioning girls as not just the beneficiaries of services, but the agents of future change,” said Lisa MacCallum, Managing Director of the Nike Foundation. “In our work so far at the Nike Foundation, we have learned that if you start with a girl, everyone else benefits: boys, women, men also. That’s the power of the girl effect.”
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The Institute is a prototype for a chain of future nursing colleges located in most district towns of Bangladesh. Importantly, nursing provides a viable career path for rural adolescent girls that is driven by strong, unmet market demand. The Institute will offer different types of degrees to expand the supply of nurse practitioners. Grameen Bank will supply educational loans and an infrastructure/outreach network to recruit candidates. As a starting point, the daughters of Grameen’s 7.6 million clients will be recruited as new students.
An existing network of Health Management Centers will serve as the primary means for employing graduated nurses, who will ultimately manage the Centers. These will be the focal point of rural health service as centers of primary diagnostics, early detection and prevention, awareness building, and a link between urban doctors and rural patients.
This is investing in the creative power of people. Out of win-win-win strategizing comes amazing innovation! The emerging sustainable economy is going to be much different than the past. Jump in! Share your ideas, together we can make sustainable real!