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Digital Community Health Initiative

Assessing Country Priorities for Digital Technology in Community Health

In 2020, the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) launched the Digital Community Health Initiative (DCHI) to strengthen community-level health care in partner countries by scaling up digitally enabled platforms. Led by USAID with the CDC, DCHI aims to improve data collection and use, strengthen implementation, and expand the role of digital tools in health.

To support this vision, PMI partnered with Digital Square at PATH to conduct a malaria and digital community health assessment and define country-specific priorities. The work is carried out in three phases:

  • Phase 1: Identify – Rapid ecosystem assessments, including desk reviews (600+ documents), surveys, and 300+ stakeholder interviews across 27 countries.
  • Phase 2: Prioritize – Workshops with 500+ stakeholders (ministries of health, malaria programs, CHWs, and partners) to validate findings and identify needs, opportunities, and priorities. Results were summarized in a cross-country report and 27 country profiles.
  • Phase 3: Implement – Country-specific activities aligned with national malaria strategies, such as tool piloting, systems development, governance strengthening, and CHW capacity-building. Sample activities included:
    • Burkina Faso: Support CHWs with digital tools (CommCare, RapidPro, DHIS2) and strengthen the enabling environment.
    • Burma: Build national capacity and support digital health architecture analysis.
    • Mozambique: Develop a community health information sub-system plan with the MOH.
    • Nigeria: Strengthen governance structures, train CHWs, and pilot updated digital data collection tools.
    • Tanzania: Expand OpenSRP for HIV and malaria interventions on the Mainland, and integrate vulnerable children’s data into national systems in Zanzibar.

Publication date: September 2025

Available materials

  1. English

    1. Strengthening Digital Community Health 4 MB PDF
    2. PMI Digital Community Health Initiative Cross-Country Landscape Report 1.6 MB PDF
    3. Senegal Success Story 1.2 MB PDF
    4. Nigeria Success Story 486.2 KB PDF
    5. Digital Health for Community-based Management of Febrile Illness 355.9 KB PDF
    6. Benin 767.2 KB PDF
    7. Burma 1007.3 KB PDF
    8. Cambodia 601 KB PDF
    9. Cameroon 748.8 KB PDF
    10. Cote d' Ivoire 730.2 KB PDF
    11. Democratic Republic of Congo 700.2 KB PDF
    12. Ethiopia 736.2 KB PDF
    13. Ghana 728.7 KB PDF
    14. Guinea 781.1 KB PDF
    15. Kenya 701.9 KB PDF
    16. Liberia 762.3 KB PDF
    17. Malawi 907.4 KB PDF
    18. Mali 836.4 KB PDF
    19. Mozambique 642.3 KB PDF
    20. Niger 697.6 KB PDF
    21. Nigeria 1 MB PDF
    22. Rwanda 685 KB PDF
    23. Senegal 830.5 KB PDF
    24. Sierra Leone 743.2 KB PDF
    25. Tanzania 686.8 KB PDF
    26. Thailand 639.5 KB PDF
    27. Uganda 692.2 KB PDF
    28. Zambia 848.6 KB PDF
    29. Zanzibar 648 KB PDF
    30. Zimbabwe 647.8 KB PDF
    31. Angola 695.2 KB PDF

  2. French

    1. Benin 624.8 KB PDF
    2. Cameroon 728.1 KB PDF
    3. Cote d' Ivoire 622.7 KB PDF
    4. Democratic Republic of Congo 708.7 KB PDF
    5. Guinea 829.4 KB PDF
    6. Madagascar 700.9 KB PDF
    7. Senegal 846 KB PDF