mHealth for Trauma Intervention Post-Ebola

Our mHealth trauma project is taking one of the most impressive mental health innovations we've seen to scale, digitizing the approach pioneered by Second Chance Africa in post-conflict Monrovia and reaching freshly traumatized communities in the wake of the Ebola outbreak. Our one-pager outlining the project, for which we're actively seeking impact investors, is here. We're pushing the envelope in making low-cost trauma services easily available to low-resource populations where, in most cases, the national health system is still struggling to meet basic needs.

The thousands of Liberians who have graduated from Second Chance Africa’s 8-week program report a 60% decrease in their trauma symptoms -- things like panic attacks, hand tremors and hyperventilation -- and that they're able to return to normal lives thanks to the program. By taking the approach mobile for community health workers, we're helping to network mental health for trauma into the package of basic services.

Now that we're teaching at Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program for the summer, we're feeling challenged to take things a step further. At the moment, we're relying on impact investors for the seed funding that will enable us to create the mobile app for community health workers and test it with implementing partners in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gaza and Rwanda.

Facilitators who run the app-based program will have, at the end of the 8 weeks, a cohesive and motivated group, ready to join the economy and begin to build their lives back. What if we could reach those people with entrepreneurial training, for those that want it, and vocational training that creates revenue streams to support the project's scale?

We're in the early stages of trying to bring in a social business component to our mHealth trauma app, . After all, while we need seed funding to get this started, we don't want to create a system that constantly needs external funding. Lucky for us, Singularity University is now partners with Yunus Social Business, so we've got some of the best support and thinking on this available.

If you'd like to learn more about how your impact investing could improve the lives of people affected by emergencies and disasters, including Ebola, get in touch (info@codeinnovation.com) to continue the conversation.