Frontline workers
Community health workers, midwives, and volunteers.
Focus — Health & Community Well-Being — Community health
COMMUNITY HEALTH
IDEAS WE SUPPORT.
World Seed Fund supports people whose ideas improve how care reaches people where they live for the patients and community health workers involved.
Why this area
COMMUNITY HEALTH
IN CONTEXT.
The last mile of health is a person, not a building. Ideas qualify when the worker, the referral, and the supply chain behind them are all accounted for.
Scope of the area
WHAT THIS AREA
INCLUDES.
Illustrations of scope, not a fixed list. If your idea belongs here but is not described below, introduce it anyway.
Reach
Getting care to remote, mobile, or excluded populations.
Prevention & screening
Finding problems early and locally.
Referral
What happens when the case exceeds local capacity.
Criteria to qualify
WHAT A COMMUNITY HEALTH
IDEA MUST SHOW.
All five criteria apply. An idea does not need to be complete or proven — it needs to be specific enough that we can judge it, and grounded enough that a next step is possible.
A defined problem, in a defined place
We need to understand exactly who is affected, where, and how they cope today. General statements about a global challenge are not enough to qualify.
- Names the place, community, or system where how care reaches people where they live fall short.
- States the situation today in plain terms — coverage, cases found early, referral completion, or cost per patient.
- Explains what the patients and community health workers involved do now, and what it costs them.
Human insight behind the idea
The idea should come from knowledge of the situation — technical, scientific, operational, cultural, or lived — rather than from an assumption about it.
- Draws on direct knowledge of how care reaches people where they live in that place.
- Accounts for why earlier outreach and community health programmes did not hold here.
- Was shaped with the patients and community health workers involved, not only for them.
A credible next step
There must be a specific thing that can be attempted next, at a scale that can be observed honestly, with a stated way of judging whether it worked.
- A defined pilot with a stated size — patients seen, households covered, or workers supported.
- A stated measure of success — coverage, cases found early, referral completion, or cost per patient.
- A timeframe within which the result can be judged honestly.
Value for people and place
The benefit should be meaningful to the community or system the idea serves, and describable in terms they would recognise.
- Improves health outcomes, travel, and cost of care for the patients and community health workers involved.
- The benefit is described in words the community itself would use.
- Does not shift cost, risk, or harm onto neighbouring people or systems.
A path to keep working
Ideas qualify when someone can plausibly own, operate, fund, and repair the result after the first phase of support ends.
- A named clinic, health authority, or community organisation able to carry the work after the first phase.
- Running costs, materials, and skills obtainable near the work.
- Ownership, permission, or agreement that lets the work continue.
Evidence & boundaries
WHAT HELPS,
AND WHAT DOES NOT.
Evidence can be modest. A careful account of a small trial is worth more than a projection.
Evidence we look for
- Any observation, record, or measurement of how care reaches people where they live in that place.
- Costs, materials, or time recorded from a small trial, however modest.
- Notes, letters, or agreements from the patients and community health workers involved or the clinic, health authority, or community organisation.
Usually outside this area
- Broad proposals about community health with no named place and no named people.
- Equipment or funding requests with no operator and no running cost.
- Work that transfers cost, risk, or harm to neighbouring people or systems.
Submit an idea
INTRODUCE YOUR
COMMUNITY HEALTH IDEA.
There is no application window and no required format. Answer these four questions in your own words and we will read them.
Who is affected, where, and how do they manage today?
What do you know about how care reaches people where they live that others working on it may not?
What could you attempt next, and how would you judge whether it worked?
Who continues the work afterwards, and what keeps it running?
Human potential is everywhere. Opportunity should be too.