About the Consortium 

About the Consortium

The Christian Health Asset Mapping Consortium is a voluntary association of organizations that will work to address urgent needs for information on, and help improve the quality of data about, the Christian health asset landscape. Founding Members include:

  • Africa Christian Health Associations Platform (ACHAP)
  • Catholic Health Association (US) International Outreach (CHA-US)
  • Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH)
  • International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA)
  • The Dalton Foundation
  • World Council of Churches (WCC)

CCIH will also serve as the secretariat for the Consortium.

A Challenge Facing Christian Health Services

Christian organizations provide a substantial share of health services in health facilities, community-based programs, and churches. They reflect the health ministry of the global church. As such, they are valuable partners and essential elements of local and international health strategies. There is a pressing need for more information about Christian health services’ scope, location, and nature, and ways to efficiently contact local and global Christian health organizations for partnerships.

Unfortunately, a lack of data about these facilities, community programs, training institutions and drug distribution networks leads to undercounting of Christian health assets and exclusion from planning, partnerships, and research.

Christian Health Assets Landscape

A comprehensive data and mapping strategy is needed to accurately reflect the breadth and complexity of Christian health assets. These assets include organizations that directly serve populations as well as those organizations that train or support direct service providers.
The following graphic demonstrates visually the Christian Health Assets Landscape.

Direct service organizations include:

  • Christian Health Care Facilities
  • Christian Community Health Initiatives
  • Congregational or Other Church-run Health Programs

Support organizations include:

    • Networks of facilities and programs, such as the Christian Health Associations
    • Drug and Medical Supply Organizations
    • Health Worker Training Institutions
    • International Support

The opportunity now is to improve access to timely and accurate information about Christian health assets in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). We can generate learning (both peer-to-peer sharing and expert-led training). We can improve the quality of data and reporting about Christian health services in national and global data. As we succeed, this data can fuel advocacy, research and learning, and innovative partnerships.

Data and mapping on Christian health assets will be useful to the following audiences: policymakers who seek to plan for health systems; donors who seek to support Christian health services; church structures that need to understand their own role in health services; partners who seek to understand collaboration opportunities; and researchers who wish to study and evaluate health services and innovations.

The Christian Health Asset Mapping Consortium is a voluntary association of organizations that will work to address urgent needs for information on—and help improve quality of data about—the Christian health asset landscape.

Purpose

Vision: Stakeholders to Christian health assets will have better information about Christian health asset data and the nature of those services, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Mission: This Consortium will increase resources, learning, and partnerships in Christian health services by improving understanding of the nature, scope, and location of those services.

Values: The core values of the Consortium are transparency, data awareness, data quality, partnership, and inclusive data governance.

Objectives

  1. Create a metadata platform or “database of databases” that can be used by organizations and individuals to learn about registered data sets, including:
    1. Level of data/types of entities in a database
    2. Ownership/source of registered data
    3. Frequency owner maintains/updates data
    4. Datasets accessible to public
    5. Identifying contact or personal information
    6. Current status and future directions with the data
    7. Summary data about datasets to share publicly
  2. Support and inform stakeholders, policy, and other audiences by sharing information about Christian health services, including:
    1. Access to the “database of databases”
    2. Access to summary reports on data provided by members
    3. Referrals to specific data owners
    4. Monitor evolution of technology, standard datasets(e.g., DHIS2), and/or data streams from ministries of health, WHO, and others
    5. Over time, shape guidance for those who work with this data
  3. Assess resources available to strengthen data on Christian health assets and develop plans to improve how members can access those resources.

Important Note: We do not plan at – this time – to create an online data warehouse of all Christian health assets.

Goals

  • Highlight information on Christian health services and programs
  • Identify and maintain information about Christian health asset data
  • Share information about health asset data that benefits Christian organizations
  • Improve representation of Christian health assets in national/global data
  • Raise support or technical assistance to Christian organizations to improve data
  • Create a learning community to improve data access and utilization
  • Foster partnerships that analyze data and apply it for program development

Consortium 2022 Launch

The Consortium held a public launch on January 26, 2022 with remarks from Amanda Vigneaud, Deputy Director, USAID’s Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and CHAMC founding members. Watch the launch event:

For more information about the Consortium, contact mapping.consortium (at) ccih.org

Access this information in a PDF to share here

Products and Resources

ACHAP Data Brief | This data brief, released in April 2022, highlights 16 Africa Christian Health Association Platform (ACHAP) members, including more than 8,000 Christian health assets in 15 countries. The Christian Health Asset Mapping Consortium prioritizes sharing updated summary data like this to improve the scope and quality of data on faith-based health systems flowing into global databases. Spacing