On June 1, 2018, the University of Washington’s International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH) country office in Haiti officially became a local non-governmental organization (NGO). The office will be rebranded as the Centre Haïtien pour le Renforcement du Système de Santé (CHARESS) and will continue to implement programs to improve HIV services via a trained health workforce, robust health information systems (HIS), and clinical mentoring.
CHARESS will be responsible for maintaining, training, and deploying HIS such as iSantéPlus and the Système d’Echange d’Information de Santé d’Haïti (SEDISH), a national health information exchange, across Haiti and ensure the sites receive on-site and remote technical assistance. The team will also oversee clinical mentoring activities at 20 sites and provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) and other implementing partners in Haiti.
“I-TECH has a mission to support sustainable development,” says Scott Barnhart, MD, MPH, Professor in the Department of Global Health and an I-TECH Principal Investigator overseeing programs in Haiti. “The conversion of the I-TECH country office and launch of a fully independent NGO to take up those activities is testament to I-TECH’s commitment to fostering locally owned and led development.”
The announcement of the shift to local ownership comes after two years of strategic planning by key stakeholders and partners to successfully transition I-TECH Haiti’s country office into an independently functioning NGO. As such, CHARESS will aim to allocate more of its funding to program activities, as well as pursue local funding opportunities restricted to Haitian organizations.
“The programs that are shifting to CHARESS have already proved to have had a dramatic impact on the health care landscape in Haiti,” remarked Jean-Guy Honoré, MD, I-TECH Haiti’s Country Director. “Transitioning of the key programs, specifically our HIS work, to a local ownership will allow CHARESS to become a leader in sustainability on the global stage. We are proud of the work that we have accomplished and look forward to the future.”
For 16 years, I-TECH has helped develop strong national health systems in low- to middle-resource countries while promoting the importance of local ownership as a way to sustain those effective health systems. I-TECH will continue to be a close partner in supporting CHARESS and looks forward to continued collaboration.