Center for Health Promotion

• Civil society organization of Rio de Janeiro, founded in 1993.
  
• Our mission is:
  To develop the autonomy and capacity of impoverished communities, empowering them to create solutions for development, and to contribute for the improvement of public services offered to them, in order to promote health, equity and quality of life.

VALUES AND PRINCIPLES 

• Health is a fundamental human right that all citizens are equally entitled to.
  
• Our goal is to built a healthy society, in which all have access to the resources that constitute quality of life: education, housing, environment, employment, leisure, culture, food, safety, social participation, and health services.
  
• Knowledge and interventions are built in partnership with communities, towards autonomy, emancipation and sustainability.

STRATEGIES

CEDAPS utilizes several participatory techniques that build the capacity of leaderships and professionals in communities, schools and health units to create, develop and evaluate social actions. Each person or group involved is author of his/her/its own action, becoming multipliers and assuring social sustainability to the initiatives.

Main methodological axis

• Problem Solving for Better Health® (PSBH). In Brazil called Shared Construction of Solutions.
  
• an incubator of social projects developed and implemented by the people who live in or work for impoverished communities. Generates practical action directed to analyze and solve priority problems, using available resources. Each participant develops and implement a project in his organization or community; CEDAPS monitors and supports projects, assisting them to reach their goals; systematize and disseminates its results.

PROGRAMS IN COMMUNITIES

• AIDS PREVENTION AND DEVELOPMENT
  COMUNICSE (Community Consulting Services in Health and Education) builds capacity of local organizations in development actions and tackling poverty, and reduction of social vulnerability to the Aids epidemic. 
  
  13 Community Prevention Centers co-managed by communities; thousands of educational leaflets and almost 400,000 condoms distributed annually; hundreds of trained multipliers organizing educational meetings; 
  
  55 communities, in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area, forming the Network of Communities in the Fight against Aids, reaching a population of 500 thousand people. Community grassroots groups and entities and women associations advised monthly. 
  
  Events, catalogs, forums and studies, and a Resource Bank with almost 1000 titles complete the activities.
  
  
• INTEGRATED LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
  An integrated territorial program that involves residents in the implementation of a development agenda, through participatory techniques of community diagnosis, collective planning, and mobilization and capacity building, creating a network of community solutions for social problems. It builds the capacity of leaderships in participatory social management, provides educational, environmental, cultural, leisure and income generation activities, and works together with governmental programs and the private sector. Benefits 17,000 people in the Western District of Rio de Janeiro.
  
  
• YOUNG ENERGY
  This program promotes capacity building for social and professional life, contributes for the creation of a positive identity and alternatives for the life project and future of teenagers, renovating community leadership. 
  
  Around 400 14-19 year-old teens, in eight communities with after-school activities, receive capacity training in health, citizenship, employment, leadership and entrepreneurship; 
  
  Young participants plan and develop nearly 350 different social projects, engaging communities and benefiting thousands of people. They reactivate community associations and participate in discussions on public policies on regional and national levels.

PROGRAMS ON PUBLIC POLICIES

• FAMILY HEALTH PROGRAM (FHP)
  A new, transforming model for the Brazilian Primary Health Care universal system, presently covering 65 million people. CEDAPS was one of the pioneers in this initiative, and it is currently a partner of the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Secretariat of Health and the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Our action in FHP is done through several ways:
  
  • Coordinating the management of units serving nearly 100 thousand people;
    
  • Developing the capacity of teams to act in Health Promotion and intersectoral interventions, engaging participation in low-income communities, and benefiting thousands of residents; 
    
  • Promoting popular participation through the creation of Community Management Councils for the Program units. 
    
  •  Participating in evaluation studies.
    
    
• HEALTH PROMOTING SCHOOLS
  Nearly 120 active projects in almost 80 public schools of Rio de Janeiro, carried out by multiplier teachers, trained in PSBH methodology. This program is conducted in partnership with the Municipal Secretariat of Health. It generates concrete benefits for nearly 15,000 students and families, and hundreds of educators, promoting health, reducing violence, improving the environment and learning abilities.

STUDIES AND RESEARCH

Our research focuses on the study of life conditions, health problems and development of low-income communities: community participatory diagnosis, study of life conditions of children and adolescents for UNICEF, and evaluation studies for national and international organizations, such as the Brazilian Ministry of Health and CORDAID. The studies are always conducted in partnership with universities.

LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ACTION

• Participates in several Third Sector networks and forums, member of ABONG - Brazilian Association of NGOs and the NGO/AIDS Forum of Rio de Janeiro State and other social movement networks;
  
• Member of the Task Force on Health Promotion, National Association of Collective Health (ABRASCO);
  
• Member of Municipal Councils of Social Assistance and Defense of Child and Adolescent Rights;
  
• Government partnerships: Brazilian Ministry of Health, Municipal Secretaries of Education, Social Assistance and Health;
  
• Develops corporate social responsibility programs together with private companies, such as AMPLA (Electricity Company of Rio de Janeiro);
  
• Participates in international networks, such as Ashoka (www.ashoka.org), International Union for Health Promotion and Education, Technical Cooperation Network (www.tcnetwork.net) and International Society for Equity and Health.
  
• Selected by the Brazilian Ministry of Health to participate in international cooperation projects on Aids.
  
• Programs featured in congresses and conferences and published in national and international journals and books; awarded in international conferences in São Paulo and Canada.

CEDAPS is a proud member of the PSBH - Problem Solving for Better Health® program's network of countries. PSBH is an international program created by the Dreyfus Health Foundation, a division of The Rogosin Institute, affiliated to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Medical College, Cornell University, New York (www.dhfglobal.org), active in 30 countries worldwide. CEDAPS participates directly in the network initiatives in six Latin American countries: Peru, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico and Nicaragua.

RESULTS

• Individual and collective empowerment, strengthening of representative entities in communities, mobilization and capacity building of multipliers, new social players engaged in development processes;
  
• Development of networks of social interventions, reaching more than 80 communities, in which nearly 500,000 people live, with more than 50,000 benefited families directly or indirectly;
  
• Improvement in the quality of health and education services;
  
• Development of models that positively influence public policies;
  
• Knowledge production from technical intervention and community's experience;
  
• Networking and Health Promotion actions on national and international levels.