Maya Health Alliance

Women's health: we define women's health in the broadest sense possible. In addition to high-quality cervical cancer screening and prenatal care, we also offer management of sexually transmitted infections, familty planning services, and treatment of all cancers that commonly affect women. We know women have diverse medical needs, so our program also includes the provision of robust primary care. We have developed specific expertise in the screening, diagnosis, referral, and treatment of cervical cancer, which is the leading cause of death in guatemala. Our obstetrics initiatives focus on reduction of maternal mortality through high-quality prenatal care, midwife education, and the use of technology to make childbirth safer. The foundation of our women's health program is providing classes in mayan languages that, when integrated with our nutrition initiatives, help women have healthier pregnancies, children, and lives. At the present time we serve over 7,000 women.

General nutrition: our nutrition program provides universal and micro-nutrient supplementation to all children from 6 months of age onward, and to all pregnant or lactating women in the communities that we serve. We focus on educating child caregivers about breastfeeding, complementary foods, common childhood illnesses, hygiene, and clean water through our community-based education programs and classes. At this time we are currently providing general nutrition monitoring and assisstance to over 800 patients.

Research: in order to provide health interventions with the highest impact and that create long lasting behavior change towardds better health, we empirically investigate chronic disease in guatemala and the effects of our program interventions. The data serves as a guide for us to start new programs, scale up existing programs, or seek to find a new solution to an old program. The center for indigenous health research, founded by Wuqu Kawoq, is a leader in global health research. In 2022 we published 12 research papers in areas including pediatric care, diabetes, covid vaccines, and cervical cancer. A complete listing of our publications since our founding can be found on our web site. Through the end of 2022 we have published 116 studies covering a range of topics including chronic malnutrition, food security, non-communicable diseases, development and gender equity in health, early child development, family planning, midwifery, and emergency obstetrics and medical anthropology.

Other program services: our other program services include primary care provided at the home and community level that are defined in our partnerships with indigenous communities to identify health needs that are important to them; early childhood disease with an emphasis on early childhood development and development of interviews using published standards from the world health organization and unicef; specialized maternal health using smart phone technology in the field to aid in diagnosis of pregnancy complications the may require hospitalization; chronic disease care integrating clinical care, health education, and linguistic and cultural sensitivity to address diseases such as diabetes, earth disease, cancer, kidney failure, epilepsy, and rheumatoid arthritis; and care navigation using an innovative system to get each patient the health care they need and deserve to allow them to live with complex illnesses in rural guatemala.