Roots of Health

Roots of Health (Ugat ng Kalusugan) is a nonprofit organization focused on improving the health of women and girls, and their communities, in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, in the Philippines. We foster self reliant women, young people, and families in Palawan to lead healthy lives by providing education and services to change attitudes and behaviors. Roots of Health empowers women and girls to secure their right to health and freedom from violence, and to support and protect the health and well-being of their families. Our target communities are young people and poor women who are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects associated with a lack of reproductive health education – unemployment, education disruption, abuse, illness, and malnutrition, etc. We seek opportunities to break this negative cycle and have created a community-centered multi-pronged approach that utilizes educational outreach as the cornerstone to build trust and share knowledge and life skills. Our aim is to improve the reproductive health of women and girls and to help reduce the incidence of maternal mortality. We also recognize the importance of girls delaying pregnancy and staying in school. Therefore we provide health education and clinical services in communities and in the local university and high school populations. Roots of Health works by fostering self-reliance, providing scientifically-based, accurate information on health, and improving both health-seeking behavior and access to Reproductive Health services. Programming is community or classroom-based, and utilizes a human rights framework, which includes the core belief that health is a human right.