Each month, mPowering Frontline Health Workers partners compile the ‘top five’ articles, videos, and resources related to mHealth, global health, and technology for development. This month’s Top Five post comes from the One Million Community Health Workers Campaign, which promotes the effective use of community health workers (CHWs) in achieving universal health coverage, and works to increase knowledge about the importance of CHWs in the post-2015 development agenda. 

Here are this month’s top five- we hope you enjoy reading them! 

We are pleased to announce that we recently expanded, improved, and updated the Resources Appendix in The mHealth Planning Guide. We reorganized the collection so that it is easier to navigate, and you will find that each section of the appendix is now more comprehensive. In addition to adding more than 25 new publications from 2013 and 2014, we designed a new Publications Matrix that provides a brief summary about why each resource helps with planning and is searchable by keyword. We have devoted a section of the appendix to existing Tools & Guides developed by a range of organizations working in mHealth.

In the private sector, Tanzania has more than 1,000 pharmacies, 2,500 pharmaceutical personnel, 6,000 accredited drug dispensing outlets (ADDOs), and more than 18,000 ADDO dispensers. The Pharmacy Council of Tanzania has overseen these facilities and personnel since 2011 but lacked a comprehensive system to manage regulatory information. Without such a system, basic facility and personnel information was inaccessible, the locations of rural ADDO facilities were unclear, and tracking business and professional licensing status, including fees collection, was difficult. Furthermore, the Pharmacy Council had no way to efficiently communicate directly with the outlets.

Coming Soon: The Online Communities of Practice (CoPs) for Global Health course hosted on the Global Health eLearning (GHeL) Center. Online CoPs have become increasingly popular within the global health and development sectors as a vehicle for capturing knowledge to ensure public health preparedness, effective information management, and virtual collaboration. Online CoPs provide a virtual space for people who share a common interest and are working towards a shared goal. This course aims to give the learner an overview of online CoPs, including the uses, benefits, and challenges of building, nurturing, and monitoring them.The course is authored by Jarret Cassaniti of JHU∙CCP and Soma Ghosal of NetHope. It is expected to be published September 2014.

We invite you to browse existing mHealth images and contribute your photos to Photoshare, a leading source for public health and development communication, focused on demonstrating the value and impact of photography in global health efforts to improve health and save lives. Photoshare, a service of the Knowledge for Health (K4Health) Project, based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs (JHU∙CCP), helps international nonprofit organizations communicate health and development issues through photography. 

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This summer’s edition of the National Peace Corps Association magazine, WorldView, focuses on business and technology. In it, Knowledge for Health Program Officer Jarret Cassaniti (RPCV Zambia 2003-2005) asks: Will Mobile Communication Bring about ‘The Ultimate Day?’ The Ultimate Day refers to John F. Kennedy’s founding vision for USAID in 1962, as the day “when all nations can be self-reliant and when foreign aid will no longer be needed.”

For the first time, the Global mHealth Forum will meet at the mHealth Summit. This two-day, co-located event presented in partnership with the mHealth Working Group and USAID will take place December 10-11, 2014. The Global mHealth Forum will focus on programming for mHealth implementers working in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

In May, the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative (HC3) launched Springboard for Health Communication an online network that offers a virtual “home” for social and behavior change communication (SBCC) professionals. Springboard is designed to foster the exchange of SBCC knowledge as well as share best practices from health communication programs that have made a measureable impact. This professional community of practice is also a place where SBCC professionals can network with colleagues, learn new skills and find new resources and tools.

For thousands of people living in rural Bangladesh, Health Assistants (HAs) and Family Welfare Assistants (FWAs)—collectively called field workers—are the first line of health care, and for many, the only cadre of health professional they have access to for health, population and nutrition (HPN) information and services. It therefore becomes very important that these field workers have the necessary skills and confidence to provide quality counseling services.

How does the “market” play into mHealth interventions for global health and development? Last week at the mHealth Summit, I had the privilege of attending the panel "From Starting to Sustaining: Models for Low-and Middle-Income Countries". As a social scientist and public health professional, I understand basic math and statistics, but working in a nonprofit environment, business and market value doesn’t always make the most sense to me. Alexis Ettinger from CycleTel™ at Georgetown University explained the need for market testing and validation for mHealth products and services. With government funding, we often don’t think about the market and how it might be a good place to turn to see the feasibility of introducing a new project or product in an emerging or developing country.