Noora Health Expands into Nepal and Announces Partnership with One Heart Worldwide

September 13, 2024 (Kathmandu, Nepal): Noora Health and One Heart Worldwide (OHW) are pleased to announce their new partnership to introduce and implement the Care Companion Program (CCP) in select hospitals across Nepal. The CCP currently trains nearly 15,000 caregivers throughout India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia every day. This expansion into Nepal is a significant milestone as the model scales rapidly throughout the globe. Focusing on maternal and newborn health, this collaboration aims to enhance quality of healthcare delivery and access through culturally-relevant caregiver training and education, significantly improving patient outcomes and support for caregivers.

One Heart Worldwide has over a decade of experience working with the Nepali government and other organizations in areas such as emergency relief and improving healthcare at the community level. This experience will be combined with Noora Health’s expertise in caregiver training and education — a model that has reached more than 10 million caregivers since 2014. 

Beginning in Q4 2024, the pilot program will launch in three hospitals: Madhesh Institute of Health and Sciences (MIHS) in Janakpur, Paropakar Maternity and Women’s Hospital (PMWH) in Kathmandu, and Provincial Hospital in Surkhet. The goal is to deliver culturally-sensitive and medically-accurate training and support tailored to the unique needs of patients and caregivers across Nepal. With Noora Health anchoring the program design process, One Heart Worldwide will lead implementation and monitoring efforts. 

Partnership Initiatives

1. Needs-Finding Report Synthesis: Noora Health and OHW will jointly analyze the needs-finding outputs, a key component of Noora Health’s human-centered design process when entering a new geography, to create content and teaching materials that address Nepal’s unique healthcare requirements.
2. Content and Digital Platform Development: The teams will explore and create a digital platform to provide ongoing support for patients and caregiver, disseminating health behavior change content, ensuring accessibility and ease of use for healthcare professionals and caregivers.
3. Training of Trainers (ToT): OHW will coordinate and implement ToT workshops with essential support from Noora Health. These three-day workshops, to be conducted at three selected hospitals, will prepare healthcare staff to conduct regular CCP sessions for patients and their family caregivers. The training curriculum will be meticulously developed to enable effective and empathetic communication by healthcare workers.
4. Implementation and Monitoring: After the training, healthcare staff will begin conducting CCP sessions in their respective wards. A comprehensive CCP roster will be established to maintain the program’s regularity. Progress will be measured using indicators such as the number of hospitals enrolled, nurses trained, caregiver training sessions offered, and caregivers trained.

This approach was designed for government and stakeholder ownership and implementation from the start. Optimized for implementation, adoption, and speed without compromising the quality of training, support, and education, this partnership model reduces barriers to entry while accelerating progress towards establishing family caregiving training and support as a global standard of care.  

“We’re thrilled to play a supportive role in implementing the CCP alongside the vast expertise of One Heart Worldwide,” said Dr. Shahed Alam, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Noora Health. “Together, we will hit the ground running to build an impactful program for patients and caregivers in Nepal.” 

One Heart Worldwide’s CEO, David Murphy, shared, “We are thrilled to partner with Noora Health to bring the Care Companion Program to Nepal.” He added, “This collaboration aligns with our mission to improve maternal and child health outcomes by equipping caregivers with the necessary skills and knowledge. Together, we aim to create a sustainable and impactful healthcare training model.”

One Heart Worldwide and Noora Health have ambitious goals: “This partnership aims to bring the best of Noora Health’s caregiver education practices from across Southeast Asia to Nepal. When you combine that with One Heart Worldwide’s local expertise, it has the potential to transform the caregiver education landscape across health facilities in Nepal over the next three to five years,” said Edith Elliott, Noora Health’s Co-Founder and Co-CEO.

For more information about Noora Health and its initiatives, please visit www.noorahealth.org.

For more information about One Heart Worldwide and its initiatives, please visit www.oneheartworldwide.org.

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About Noora Health

Noora Health is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health outcomes by equipping patients and family caregivers with the necessary skills to manage health conditions effectively at home. Its focus is on critical life-saving skills, chronic disease management, and postoperative care — all of which are delivered through engaging and culturally-appropriate training and content.

With the support of public health systems across India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, Noora Health has reached more than 10 million caregivers since 2014. Its flagship training program, the Care Companion Program, has been shown to reduce post-surgical cardiac complications by 71% and newborn readmissions by 56%. In 2022, Noora Health was honored as a TED Audacious Project grantee and received the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Innovation — a catalytic opportunity to jump-start their ambitious goal of reaching 70 million caregivers by 2027.

About One Heart Worldwide

One Heart Worldwide (OHW) is a non-profit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safer in remote and underserved regions of Nepal. Founded in 2004, OHW employs a comprehensive “Network of Safety” model that includes training healthcare professionals and local stakeholders, providing essential medical supplies, upgrading health facilities, and raising awareness about maternal and newborn health. Through strategic partnerships and community engagement, OHW has reached a significant milestone of impacting 1 million mothers and newborns with improved access to maternal and newborn care in Nepal.

About the Care Companion Program

At the heart of Noora Health is the Care Companion Program (CCP) — an adaptable, context-specific, and human-centered suite of educational tools and training for patients and caregivers. By partnering with hospitals and healthcare systems, the program ensures that patients and their families receive continuous support and education from the time they are admitted until they return home, improving health outcomes in the long run.

As part of this, healthcare staff in public hospitals and clinics are trained to transfer health skills to family caregivers. Then, the CCP’s mobile follow-up and support component reaches both healthcare staff and families outside of health facilities. 

Since 2014, the CCP has been adapted for several major medical conditions, including: maternal and newborn care, cardiology and cardiac surgery, oncology care, general medical and surgical care, tuberculosis, and COVID-19.

For more information, please contact:

Kelly Hagler
Associate Director, Communications
Noora Health
kelly@noorahealth.org 

Katie Dyas
Communications Manager
One Heart Worldwide
katie@oneheartworldwide.org