Monitoring Evaluation of Praava Health Programs in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Name: Ishani Guha
School: Mailman School of Public Health, Class of 2022
Mentors: Sylvana Q. Sinha, Esq. and Kim Hekimian, PhD
Abstract
The average time a Bangladeshi doctor spends with their patient is forty-eight seconds. With such a brief time frame, patients cannot receive the care they need from their providers. By mandating a fifteen-minute appointment window with providers and ensuring the middle class gets access to quality and holistic medical care, Praava Health is disrupting the healthcare status quo in Bangladesh. At Praava, ensuring a patient’s journey, from the time they enter the facility to the time they get their lab results or medicines the next day, must be uniform. Service delivery and guaranteeing cross-functionality among teams while monitoring patient care are key in a perfect patient experience. By designing a corporate sales and marketing strategy through gathering inputs from the sales, marketing, and operations teams was crucial in ensuring the sales team’s functionality was matched with the operation team’s outputs. Using health promotion and communication strategies, Praava’s patients were sent targeted health messages about preventative health checkups, cancer screenings, rapidly rising rates of ischemic heart disease, and COVID-19 prevention in Bangladesh. Crafting health messages targeting Praava’s largely middle-class, the urban population was essential in both increasing patient volume and awareness about disease types, symptoms, risks, and treatment methods for chronic ailments ranging from diabetes to hypertension.