Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu' Kawoq

Maya Health Alliance | Wuqu' Kawoq is unlocking healthcare for those who need it most. We work in Guatemala’s most impoverished communities, solving their pressing health care needs. We overcome barriers to health–uniting medicine, culture, and language. Where others say “no,” we say “yes.” Maya Health Alliance is a leader in research and treatment models for chronic diseases, including child malnutrition, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. We currently provide primary care services in central Guatemala to about 20,000 individuals, most of whom are indigenous Maya. We are dedicated to providing comprehensive, high-quality healthcare to the rural indigenous Maya of Guatemala. Our model involves partnering with communities to identify their unique needs, providing integrated primary care and specialty care free of charge, and tailoring services to overcome the systemic barriers to health that our patients face. We stand out from the other NGOs in Guatemala because of our medical expertise, robust program evaluation and quality-improvement, and nuanced understanding of local culture, including care provided in the Maya languages that our patients speak. Some Outcomes and Metrics: 1) Our chronic malnutrition program treats 2000 children a year and has had unprecedented results. At a community level, we have repeatedly shown that it is possible to reduce rates of chronic malnutrition by 20-40% within 2-3 years from Patulul, Guatemala for a recent example of a 39% reduction over two years. More importantly, we can show that these reductions in malnutrition correlate with large improvements in cognitive outcomes. These programs yield lifelong benefits, enhancing cognition, success in school, and future earnings potential. 2) Maternal care—We support a network of nearly 50 traditional midwives through education and facilitation of hospital referral for over 25 patients a month. We are currently conducting an NIH-funded project using smartphones to improve community-based assessment of mother and baby. We also provide prenatal services designed to fill in the many gaps in care left by the public health system, including management of medically complex pregnancies. For example, we have diagnosed and treated dozens of expecting mothers with preeclampsia and insulin-dependent diabetes, offering home-based care and long-term follow up for these disorders, which often require prolonged hospitalizations in the public sector. 3) Cervical cancer prevention and treatment—Our nurses provide cytology-based cervical cancer screening and empiric treatment for sexually transmitted infections. To date we have screened more than 1500 women. We have a robust system for ensuring delivery of results to all women, compared to the ¼ of patients who never receive their screening results performed at local public health centers. Nationally, we are among a very small group of organizations that provides follow-up care to women found to have pre-cancerous lesions or cervical cancer, and among these organizations, we support the highest annual volume of women requiring follow-up care. We prioritize patient follow-up for women with positive screening results, with less than half the loss-to-follow up rate of comparable programs. We have provided care coordination and funding for dozens of women with cancerous and pre-cancerous conditions.