On December 8th, 2020, the United Kingdom became the first country to launch a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Through April 2021, over 1.25 billion vaccine doses were administered worldwide. Of those, 40% have been given in the United States or Europe. Many fear that vaccine nationalism will leave poor countries behind.
Thus far, low-income countries have administered far fewer doses than wealthy nations, as Figure 1 shows. The devastating second COVID-19 wave in India has been a painful example of these discrepancies’ potential consequences.
Kuunika: Data For Action featured by the OpenHIE Initiative
When data systems don’t work together, critical health decisions are delayed, or never made at all.
In Malawi, Cooper/Smith through the Kuunika: Data for Action project, used OpenHIE architecture to facilitate data exchange between OpenLMIS, DHIS2 and other health and logistics data systems, paving the way for smarter, data-driven decisions for health.
“Through use of this OpenHIE ADX-based implementation pattern for aggregate data exchange, the team is now able to connect additional systems that provide aggregate data to DHIS2 in short periods of time.”
Read the full article here on the new OpenHIE website.
Originally published on coopersmith.org, October 14, 2016
We’re gearing up to launch the Kuunika: Data for Action project in Malawi. To date, we’ve had the pleasure of working with some of Malawi’s finest across government, private, and not-for-profit sectors.
As we work on the project’s implementation plan, a gap in the landscape became clear. Kuunika’s overall goal is to increase access to and use of high-quality health data at multiple levels. However, given the vast array of actors, skillsets, and data systems, where do we start? We want the project to target those users, systems, and activities we expect will…
Originally published on coopersmith.org, June 17, 2016
The last few months have been exciting for us! We recently received four years of funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support a project in Malawi called Kuunika: Data for Action. (“Kuunika” means to bring the light in the local language, Chichewa). This project focuses on improving supply of and access to HIV and health data and use of data for decision-making. We work hand-in-hand with the Government of Malawi and a strong group of technical partners to improve effectiveness and efficiency in the health sector and HIV response. …
As COVID-19 wears on, more data emerges about the pandemic response. Cooper/Smith’s mission is to make this data accessible to policymakers and people working in health systems, so they can use it to make better decisions.
Today, policymakers face pressing questions about how to allocate foreign aid for COVID-19. Is it going to the right places? How can we tell who needs more?
We created a set of simple dashboards to help answer those questions. The dashboards use Tableau Public to display a range of financial and epidemiological data.
This presentation was given by Tyler Smith, Cooper/Smith Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder, and was part of a satellite presentation given at the HIVR4P Virtual Conference (January 27–29, 2021) on the Blantyre Prevention Strategy, hosted by Georgetown University’s Center for Innovation in Global Health and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Blantyre Prevention strategy is run by the Government of Malawi through a consortium of partners.
For more information, visit CIGH.georgetown.edu or write to us at contact@coopersmith.org.
Our co-founders shared a vision for an organization that would do development differently. Learn how.
Hard to believe it’s been five years since our co-founders Hannah Cooper Klein and Tyler Smith shared a vision for an organization that would do development differently and started Cooper/Smith.
Today, with the support of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, UNICEF, Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the United Nations Foundation and Georgetown University, their vision has taken hold in Malawi, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Rwanda, Thailand, Indonesia and more. Our team is driving change throughout the world with hard data, innovative analysis, and country-led collaboration.
We love what we do.
Thanks for taking the road less traveled with us.
Data on population movements and a recent seroprevalence study may offer clues.
COVID-19 cases in Kenya are accelerating rapidly. New cases have increased 300% month-over-month since April of this year while global and regional media have reported on the economic toll of stringent lock-down measures and heavy-handed government practices.
In previous posts, we explored how Africa and the rest of the world have struggled to understand the full extent of the pandemic on the continent. …
Originally published on our website on June 3, 2020
We wanted to share the following statement written by Midanna de Alamada: our Data & Research Analyst who also serves as our Lead for Corporate Social Responsibility as this encapsulates how Cooper/Smith staff are feeling at this time and the actions we intend to take:
The Black community is in pain. The tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery occurred during the height of COVID-19, which has disproportionately devastated the Black community. These recent injustices bring to the surface structural and systematic inequalities that are part of African Americans’ daily lived experiences. The only difference…
We revisit an analysis from two months ago to see how COVID-19 testing capacity has changed in Africa.
A few weeks ago, we wrote an analysis on COVID-19 testing capacity in sub-Saharan Africa. At the time, testing was extremely limited and not accelerating at a sufficient pace. Today we revisit that analysis to see how the situation in Africa has changed since then.
At the time of our first post two months ago, there was considerable optimistic coverage in the media regarding Africa’s success with COVID-19 . We also saw doubt from politicians, think tanks, and economists as to the extent to which COVID-19 would cause death and disruption to the health system — often citing Africa’s young…
Cooper/Smith
We use hard data to increase effectiveness and efficiency of health and development programs worldwide. www.coopersmith.org
