INTM 597 - Special projects

This paper is comprised in the entrepreneurship area and maps out the aspects that have to be taken into consideration to raise up the startup Waveland. Waveland is conceived to be the next Instagram for surf checking, an app that will enable surfers to discover in real time which are the surfing conditions in their favorite surf spots. The content of this report goes through the identification of a problem that hasn’t yet been solved by the industry. It is discovered a gap between the service that the already stablished competitors provide and what the users really need. This is explained in the first chapter of the report, the introduction. After that, the report goes about the market and competitors, the competitive advantage of Waveland, the go to market strategy, the profit formula and the organization that will manage the company. The project objective is to define the strategy that the entrepreneur should follow to start up this business as well as develop the first beta version of the app. The scope of the project is the first two years of business, which comprises launching the app in Basque country, stablish there, and then expand to the rest of Spain and nearer countries: France and UK. As a result of these last 9 months of work, I have come up with a roadmap to start that process, in which has been proved the feasibility of the project in economical, legal and strategic terms. Additionally, I have developed the first version of the app, available at iOS and Android.Outgoin

INTM 597 - Special projects

This paper is comprised in the entrepreneurship area and maps out the aspects that have to be taken into consideration to raise up the startup Waveland. Waveland is conceived to be the next Instagram for surf checking, an app that will enable surfers to discover in real time which are the surfing conditions in their favorite surf spots. The content of this report goes through the identification of a problem that hasn’t yet been solved by the industry. It is discovered a gap between the service that the already stablished competitors provide and what the users really need. This is explained in the first chapter of the report, the introduction. After that, the report goes about the market and competitors, the competitive advantage of Waveland, the go to market strategy, the profit formula and the organization that will manage the company. The project objective is to define the strategy that the entrepreneur should follow to start up this business as well as develop the first beta version of the app. The scope of the project is the first two years of business, which comprises launching the app in Basque country, stablish there, and then expand to the rest of Spain and nearer countries: France and UK. As a result of these last 9 months of work, I have come up with a roadmap to start that process, in which has been proved the feasibility of the project in economical, legal and strategic terms. Additionally, I have developed the first version of the app, available at iOS and Android.Outgoin

Evidence-based training of frontline health workers for door-to-door health promotion : a pilot randomized controlled cluster trial with lady health workers in Sindh province, Pakistan

Article in pressObjective: Demonstrate the effective use of community-based evidence for health promotion by Lady HealthWorkers (LHWs) in Sindh, Pakistan. - Methods: A baseline study on mothers and children provided local evidence for risk communication tools designed and tested by LHWs. The communities were randomized to intervention and control. LHWs visited women before and after childbirth to discuss safe practices in pregnancy, in the intervention group using the new tools and in the control group using their standard procedures. A household survey and focus groups permitted assessment of the impact of the intervention. - Results: Women in the intervention communities were more likely to attend prenatal checkups, to stop routine heavy work during pregnancy, to give colostrum to newborn babies, and to maintain exclusive breastfeeding for four months. Community focus groups confirmed a positive reaction to the tools. - Conclusion: Discussion by lady health workers of local evidence underlying safe motherhood messages improved uptake of protective health practices. - Practice implications: Door-to-door health promotion based on culturally appropriate interaction around relevant evidence can have a positive impact on health practices. Engaging health workers from the onset builds capacities, improves dialogue within the health system and performance of frontline health workers

Mobilising communities for Aedes aegypti control: the SEPA approach

Abstract Camino Verde (the Green Way) is an evidence-based community mobilisation tool for prevention of dengue and other mosquito-borne viral diseases. Its effectiveness was demonstrated in a cluster-randomised controlled trial conducted in 2010–2013 in Nicaragua and Mexico. The common approach that brought functional consistency to the Camino Verde intervention in both Mexico and Nicaragua is Socialisation of Evidence for Participatory Action (SEPA). In this article, we explain the SEPA concept and its theoretical origins, giving examples of its previous application in different countries and contexts. We describe how the approach was used in the Camino Verde intervention, with details that show commonalities and differences in the application of the approach in Mexico and Nicaragua. We discuss issues of cost, replicability and sustainability, and comment on which components of the intervention were most important to its success. In complex interventions, multiple components act in synergy to produce change. Among key factors in the success of Camino Verde were the use of community volunteers called brigadistas, the house-to-house visits they conducted, the use of evidence derived from the communities themselves, and community ownership of the undertaking. Communities received the intervention by random assignment; dengue was not necessarily their greatest concern. The very nature of the dengue threat dictated many of the actions that needed to be taken at household and neighbourhood levels to control it. But within these parameters, communities exercised a large degree of control over the intervention and displayed considerable ingenuity in the process. Trial registration ISRCTN27581154