EduHealth (Training the Trainers)

dedicated teachers for health-education and eduHealth technology platform, to prevent lifestyle diseases in children.Teachers and children as CHANGE-MAKERS.
 

1. can we really achieve healthcare sustainable development goals(SDGs)  without involving teachers and children?

Non-communicable diseases(NCDs) are the leading cause for death and disability in the world. children are not immune to this burden. Risk factors for lifestyle diseases take root in childhood and youth.

Globally 124 million children/adolescents are obese and at risk of NCDs. 41 million under 5 children are obese.

Children and adolescents carry a substantial burden of chronic disease risk factors:

• >70% prevalence of physical in-activity and low fruit/vegetable intake,

• 1 in 5 children are overweight or obese, increasing TEN fold in last four decade, a"growing and disturbing public health crisis"

• smoking, passive smoking and harmful consumption of alcohol been increasing alarmingly high. 

Current educational system is "knowledge -based". Even in well-developed countries like England,40% of schools do-not have reasonable health-education lessons.

2. 

eduHealth is an online and taught behavioral change platform for school-children to prevent lifestyle risk-factors/diseases. taught by eduHealth teachers (dedicated school teachers for health-education) in a gamestyle model with rewards, making class-room "Creative-Play area, to learn and reward healthy behaviors".

Healthy behaviours learnt in childhood would continue into adulthood.compulsory school years provide an easy entry point to engage this age group and, for children school is the best place to learn. we believe this is the best opportunity for lifetime prevention of NCDs.

eduHealth-curriculum is based on WHO school-health policy framework. our medical experts train the teachers on risk factors for NCDs and evidence-based interventions, and equip teachers with online/offline tools to deliver these interventions effectively both in class-rooms and outside school hours through eduHealth-digital platform.

digital-platform tracks children habits and risky health-behaviors in real-time, providing comprehensive feedback to teachers. Analytics and workflow templates helps in decision-making and teachers will be supported by our medical experts providing clinical governance, and supportive ecosystem for teachers.

eduHealth provides multi-disciplinary holistic approach including relevant stake-holders like parents, community etc.. with "TEACHERS AS CHANGE MAKERS" and focuses on complete behavioral change management rather than handling childhood obesity alone.

3.

India has second highest obese children in the world and home for nealy 15 million obese children, on the other hand we have large number of teachers who are on regular hunger strikes for jobs and by-default their training is usually inadequate.

our solution helps to generate jobs  for unemployed teachers, forgotten by the ill-designed educational system. we employ the teachers and they receive professional training and qualification in chronic disease management and supported through continuous professional development.

evidence proved that behavioural risk factor intervention in children would ultimately prevent risk factor accumulation, childhood obesity and NCDs. banking on the evidence eduHealth is committed to make SDG goals a reality and in most cost-effective manner.

School health is fairly new concept in developing countries. even hi-end private schools in India donot have dedicated school-health teachers.

our approach of

1. Training the trainers :

• professional training for teachers on chronic diseases, risk factors and evidence-based interventions

2. school children:

• personalised chornic disease prevention program, tailor made for individual child and delivered by dedicated, professionally-trained teachers, monitored/governed by clinical-teams
• digital behaviour change platform for risk-factor assessment, tracking and monitoring

3. Parents & communities

• involving parents and communities to bring holistic-care approach for better outcomes.

is an innovative improvisation based on WHO (World-Health-Organisation) school-health policy framework

eduHealth digital platform with dedicated screening templates are designed to collect, risk factor prevalence in each child. built-in workflows tracks the risk factors and health progress will be monitored in real-time.

our developers  are trained-in python programming language, considered as the best for artificial-intelligence, helps to build predictive care models, and capacity building.

we have two dedicated developers taking training on Blockchain ethereum and hyperledger,to build ethers based game style model to engage and enable behavioural change in children. children will be incentivised with eduHealth(eH) tokens as reward for healthy behaviors, can be redeemable against medical-costs with partnering-clinics.

• built tech-team with 4 people - needs additional 4 to 6 people.
• partnered with clinic that offers chronic disease management
• discussions with two large schools (5000 -students) has been very positive
• our software/app will be fully functional in 2-3 months
• we hired two teachers/educators who will undergo training in the clinic
• clinical director and clinical supervisor are in-place, to train the educators, we need to build further multi-discilinary clinical team
• large pilot in these two schools, hopefully by September
• employ/train 35 teachers,reach atleast 5,000 students

3-5 years: train 700 teachers and impact 100,000 students.

initially concentrating on urban premium-schools to achieve  financial sustainability and partly due to parents awareness, making eduhealth more acceptable.

reaching 5,000 students gives descent-data for analytics and build predictive care models, to support teachers in decision making and capacity building.

three years time, we shall be ready to expand to semi-urban/rural areas by providing affordable interactive online training for teachers in disadvantaged communities, to reach greater number of people

Next month we are meeting regional director of chaitanya schools, who have state wide branches boarding more than 100,000 students

our aim is to make class-room a "creative-play area to learn and reward healthy behaviours"

schools will be enrolled into eduhealth program as strategic partners with legal contracts.

eduhealth provides complete solution to the students. eduhealth educators will be deployed in the schools, who will be given dedicated number of students/classes to assess, and track  the risk factors.

online/offline  workflows and evidence-based tools, to make risk-factor intervention, personalised and creative for children, more like game play model, with rewards.

both parents and named school staff can access progress and feed-back through dedicated app

mini-pilot on small group of children with parents from varied demographics was very positive.

youngest child treated through eduHealth was 16 months baby weighing 17 kilos (above photograph with father-permission taken).

one father’s words " now even my 7-year child knows "LAYS" CHIPS  is not healthy, rather chooses a fruit-salad".

negotiations with two large schools have been positive, and looking forward to launch our pilot.

we expect to be serving 5000 students in 12 months time and employ/train 35 teachers.

each child gets risk-factor assessment and personalised intervention in
class-room and digitally. App will track and monitor the progress.

dedicated 45-min session for health, on alternate day for each class
being discussed, making class-room a "creative-play area to learn and
reward healthy behaviours"

benefits of risk-factors interventions are proven globally through research and evidence based medicine.

we expect to be serving 30,000 students and employ/train 200 teachers in 3 years time.

i am experienced mother with two children. our team has an experienced lifestyle-disease specialist, a women's helath specilaist and a paeditrician forming core clinical team for training the teachers and building eduHealth curriculum.

three hospitals are ready to enter agreement (paeditrics/women health and lifestyle diseases) as partnering hospitals for further care as needed.

our technology team has work experience of delivering award winning digital platform for non-communicable diseases.

our revenue model is subscription based with annual care plans with schools as strategic partners.

initially eduHealth is, Busiess-to-Business value added service to private schools. later-on will add business-to-customer platform.

we charge the school per student with schools offering eduHealth as a value added service with all the children enrolling bydefault, bringing universal behavioral change across all the ages in the school.

enrolling 3-4 large schools (adding upto 5000 students) will reach break-even  and probably early profits, with in the first 12-18 months.

1. human capital: to connect with the relevant resources and mentorship to make eduHealth a successful venture and make the world a child-friendly place.

2. technology:  partner with solve/MIT community for technology mentorship with MIT CSAIL.

3. funding: access to growth capital is a challenging in developing countries like India. we are looking for funding support from investors and grants

4. international visibility and branding being pat of SOLVE as a market place.

our key barriers are

1. funding and financial support

2. having descent brand value

3. technology mentorship

being a startup entering into a new market segment needs descent brand value. we believe association with SOLVE will help us to overcome intial breakthrough for our platform.

with the help of solve/global communities, our vision of serving disadvantaged communities can be a sooner reality.

we are looking for meaningful technology mentorship through MIT's computer science and Artifiscial Intelligence laboratory (CSAIL)