HAC Annual Report 2017

We are excited to share HAC’s Annual Report for 2017! Read the full report here: HAC Annual Report 2017.

Letter from the Executive Director
2017 was an eventful and challenging year for Health Access Connect. We received a
$50,000 grant from ViiV Healthcare’s Positive Action Challenges. That’s a real validation of
our model! We started expansion activities to reach new villages and health facilities in new
districts, but it was slow going. That’s a problem! Our vision is to spread mobile outreach
clinic services all over Uganda and possibly beyond, but to do that we need to be able to
reach new villages quickly. So what was the holdup?!

1. We were too reliant on community groups. Community groups were at the center
of our model for coordination and oversight of the outreach clinics, but we were
running into a variety of problems: groups fell apart, chairpersons were not around,
members had disagreements and disbanded, groups were not meeting or discussing
anything, and so on. After seeing these problems arise again and again, we decided
to just work with community health workers (VHTs) to do the outreach clinic
oversight, and this adjustment has made a huge difference!

2. We were spending too long talking about outreach clinics before starting them.
We spent a lot of time going back and forth to villages to explain and re-explain how
the outreach clinics work. Sometimes attendance would be poor. Other times people
needed to be reminded. It was kind of like explaining a game over and over again: it
is not clear how it works until you see it — you need to just start and play! Now our
Field Officers go into a village just three or four times before outreach clinics begin.

3. We needed to hire more staff. For our outreach clinics to expand, our organization
must expand. Duh! We need more people going to the villages, going back and forth
with health workers, and doing the day-to-day work of making outreach clinics work.
We have hired an M&E Officer and an additional Field Officer, and we are planning
on hiring at least three new staff in the first months of 2018. Onward!

4. We need to use our connections to start working in new districts sooner. One
major holdup was getting approval from district government officials. We brought and
discussed out MOU, but getting people to sign was not straightforward. Government
officials would ask, “Who are you? Where have you worked?” We took for granted
that this was an easy, rubber-stamp process, but we needed to explain ourselves
better to government officials. After some meetings with our management team and
calls with our partners in Kalangala District, officials signed the MOU enthusiastically!

By the end of 2017, we were serving nine villages. By the end of 2018, we hope to be
serving 35 villages. We’re looking forward to a big year!

Sincerely,
Kevin Gibbons
Executive Director