Pioneering in Child Healthcare Services that Deliver Quality: AddressHealth

Child Healthcare in countries like India requires better accessibility and affordability. Born in 2010, AddressHealth aims to change the way child healthcare is practiced. A small team of like-minded people came together and dreamt of making the pediatric primary care continuum possible by using technology and innovation. At the core of this idea was the revolutionary concept of reaching quality healthcare to every child through schools.

AddressHealth partnered with schools, understanding that while the various educational boards and governments mandate certain healthcare facilities like school health checks, infirmaries, and health education in campuses, the lack of organized services make it difficult for schools to meaningfully implement these. AddressHealth has been revolutionizing this space through innovative ways of reaching into schools with quality for every child at affordable prices. Its School Health Service is rapidly turning this idea real, from one child to the next, one campus to the other and one city to another city. It continues to bring high-quality primary child healthcare to more and more children in an ever-expanding portfolio of partner schools.

A Friend to Every Child

AddressHealth is here to create new ‘addresses’ for childcare. It believes that parents, schools, and the community at large must address children’s health proactively. Schools hold the primary responsibility of ensuring that the formative years of every child is healthy. It partners them in this mission. AddressHealth has:

• Over 200 partner schools
• Presence in multiple cities
• Been demonstrably successful in making over 2 lakh students healthier
• Offered screening and counseling on asthma to over 50000 children

Services

Health Check and Follow-up: AddressHealth Check goes beyond mandatory requirements and yet simplifies the process for school management, students, and parents. Children who require it are given a one-on-one follow-up. The technologically-enabled Electronic Health Records maintains the updated health status of each child in an accurate and easily retrievable format. 

Medical Room: Childcare is most needed at the place the child spends most of the day: the school. That’s why at every school it partners, AddressHealth sets up and runs a fully-equipped, nurse-led infirmary called the AddressHealth Medical Room.AddressHealth Medical Rooms is its most comprehensive offering for schools as they not only play the role of school infirmaries but also act as coordination hubs for various health activities.The units provide the following services:

• Tele-consultation: AddressHealth provides tele-medicine equipped units that can carry out emergency and planned teleconsultations with various child health experts
• First Aid & First Contact Care: Basic school emergencies addressed and first aid or first contact care provided
• Triage & Evacuation Advice: School nurse assesses the severity of any adverse medical event and, if necessary, through emergency tele-consult, takes decisions for evacuation or referral
• Recovery & Observation: For children with acute illnesses, facilities to rest and to be under observation of the school nurse provided
• Electronic Health Records: Records for all health encounters at the center, integrated with specific history for each child, maintained by the staff along with the findings from annual health check
• Guidance & Consultations for Further Interventions: Planned consults arranged for parents to be guided on specific health issues of children

Health Education: AddressHealth Education is a sequential, structured health education curriculum for school children. In its partner schools, it conducts periodic seminars not just for students but for parents, teacher, and staff, telling them about healthy practices that are best imbibed in childhood. The curriculum is designed by a team of experienced health experts and educationalists to provide children of each class with age-appropriate content that will help develop healthy values, healthy behaviors, and practices.

Nurturing Schools Program: AddressHealth partners with TenderMinds, a Bangalore- and Mysore-based specialist child and adolescent mental health specialist, to bring forth its Nurturing Schools Program. This is AddressHealth’s Counselling & Psychology initiative that addresses the growing burden of mental health problems in children of school-going age. It is a well-documented fact that many of the behavioral, emotional, pro-social, and peer-related problems are better tackled in schools, in group settings, than in clinics. Nurturing Schools is a holistic approach powered by TenderMinds’ team of child psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and school counselors on the one hand, and AddressHealth’s extensive network of partner schools on the other.Its special programs for schools include:

• Screening: Standardized tool used to screen all students to identify those at risk of developing emotional difficulties (like anxiety), social difficulties, hyperactivity problems, behavioral problems, and peer problems
• School-based workshops: For students identified to be ‘at risk’ by the screening process, themed group-based workshops conducted by trained psychologists
• Workshops for teachers: With the goal of aiding teachers who value the emotional wellbeing of their students, an orientation session provided to all teachers at the beginning of the program
• Workshops for parents: Three targeted workshops for parents conducted: Understanding the learning needs of children; improving motivation in children to help them achieve their potential; an overview of effective discipline

Dr. Anand Lakshman, CEO: With considerable experience in building community-based health systems and programs, Dr. Anand lends AddressHealth its core vision and blueprint. He is an expert health manager with a proven trackrecord in his work with the WHO, Micronutrient Initiative and as a consultant to the World Bank.

“A child’shealth monitoring is as important as homework for them.”