2024 PQMD Collaboration & Learning Forum

Today's Emcee: Trina Newcomb, Medical Teams International 

Program highlight and warehouse tour (closed-toed shoes required).

Explore Mercy Ships’ Warehouse Operations: Supporting Global Missions from Lindale, Texas
Mercy Ships operates two key warehouse facilities that are essential to supporting our two ships. Our Lindale, Texas facility serves as the primary hub for a majority of our medical supplies, while our Rotterdam, Netherlands facility handles food, general supplies, and marine operational needs. Together, these facilities manage around 125 container shipments annually, showcasing the agility of our supply chain in adapting to varying lead times, allocations, and surgical schedules. In addition to container shipments, we utilize DHL, air cargo, and couriers to ensure timely delivery and high-quality care for our staff and patients.

We invite you to join us for a tour of our Lindale warehouse to gain insight into how we support our two-ship operation. Please note that closed-toe shoes are mandatory for the tour to ensure safety. We look forward to sharing the intricate details of our supply chain and the vital role our warehouse plays in our global mission.

Day 2 of member showcases will highlight success in Maternal and Child Health (MCH), support for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Health Workforce development, and Access. In this engaging session, PQMD members will present rapid-fire “snapshots” of their innovative approaches and achievements in these vital areas. The session will conclude with breakout discussions, offering participants the opportunity to exchange experiences and strategies related to each topic.

Children International: Youth-Led Social Accountability 
Children International (CI) addresses pressing adolescent health issues such as early pregnancy, substance abuse, and sexually transmitted infections by ensuring that healthcare services are tailored to meet the needs of youth. Barriers like limited knowledge, distrust in providers, and unwelcoming healthcare environments prevent adolescents from accessing essential services. To combat these challenges, CI integrates demand generation and social accountability into its adolescent health initiatives, aligning with Sustainable Development Goal 3 to promote good health and well-being for young people.

Through youth-led Social Accountability, CI empowers adolescents to take an active role in evaluating and improving their health services. In projects like those in the Dominican Republic and Zambia, trained youth lead the entire social accountability process, fostering greater participation and addressing specific health issues in action plans. This approach has not only increased youth confidence and ownership but also resulted in tangible improvements in local health services, enabling young people to advocate for themselves and effect positive change in their communities.

Corus International: MOMENTUM Integrated Health Resilience (MIHR) 
MIHR is an initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that aims to enhance maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH), family planning (FP), and reproductive health (RH) services in fragile and conflict-affected settings, including South Sudan, Sudan, DRC, Niger, Burkina Fasso, Mali, Benin, Tanzania, and Yemen. The project fosters coordination between development and humanitarian partners to strengthen health resilience at the individual, family, community, and system levels. Key strategies involve implementing evidence-based interventions across the continuum of care, Age specific and life stages, collaborating with local institutions, and improving community participation to create a supportive environment for MNCH outcomes.

To date, MIHR has trained over 7,000 health providers across more than 1,000 facilities, resulting in over 600,000 supported deliveries and more than 1 million children receiving the third dose of DPT (Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis). The project is led by IMA World Health, in collaboration with partners such as JSI Research & Training Institute, Pathfinder International, and CARE. For further details, please visit the  MOMENTUM website or refer to the MIHR fact sheet.

World Vision

Edwards Lifesciences Foundation

Anera: Healthcare in a Displacement Crisis - Mobile Clinics in Gaza
Anera’s main program focuses on Product Donations, but with the onset of the Gaza crises, the organization has adapted its efforts to address critical care gaps. Access to medical services has been severely hindered by the limited number of functioning hospitals in southern Gaza, where approximately one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have sought refuge. Swift distribution of medical aid has also proven challenging due to the dense population and widespread destruction of healthcare facilities. In response to these pressing needs, Anera has quickly implemented mobile clinics that provide essential care, including wound treatment, maternal and child health services, and management of non-communicable diseases, bringing vital healthcare directly to those who need it most.

During the recovery phase, Anera plans to transition this model to local health clinics, empowering them to take the lead in providing care. Additionally, Anera is exploring ways to scale up similar mobile clinics in Lebanon.

Requested by members and guided by Standard Co., PQMD has leveraged basic benchmarking data and developed a member-exclusive digital resource to help organizations learn, connect and collaborate with their follow members.

This session will provide an in-depth exploration of the complexities and rising costs associated with supply chain logistics. It will focus on procurement strategies, managing inventory constraints, and optimizing cost management while ensuring quality and sustainability. Following the panel discussion, participants will engage in a round robin of topic discussions sharing ideas to address these logistics challenges and identify effective strategies for improving efficiency and impact. Breakout groups include: Planning and Preparedness; Cost Management Strategies; Procurement Models; Infrastructure and Distribution; Quality Assurance and ROI; and Environmental Sustainability.

"Leaning into Sustainability and Resilience: What's Working and What's Driving Success" comes to a close, PQMD leadership will wrap-up of the CLF and deliver PQMD announcements for future meetings.

Fundamentals of Humanitarian Logistics (Facilitation by: Airlink)
This interactive session will offer participants an opportunity to learn about the requirements and key considerations for moving aid cargo by air to international programs. Looking at aid mobilization through the lens of an emergency scenario, participants engage directly with shipping documentation, cargo preparation, and arrangement of in-country receiving requirements in order to get donated goods onsite quickly following a disaster. This session is geared towards NGO members and Corporate members that routinely work in disaster response as a tool in building logistics capacity and assessing current or partner capabilities. Participants will walk away from this session with a deeper understanding of the documentation required to dispatch aid (whether procured or donated) to program sites using air freight, access to templates and guidance on preparing cargo for shipment by air, and a list of considerations for important consignee vetting to ensure shipments arrive where and when they are needed.

Mental Health & Resilience Training for Frontline Workers (Facilitation by: Project HOPE)
The Mental Health and Resilience Training program was originally designed for frontline healthcare workers and has been adapted to provide PQMD members knowledge, tools, techniques and practical guidance on building resilience, self-care and how to support themselves and others in times of crises. It will push participants to think about operationalizing mental wellbeing and advocating for organizational mental health practical initiatives. This training will provide insight into what humanitarian staff, emergency response volunteers, and frontline workers are faced with and provide helpful tools on how to support our own mental wellbeing and wellbeing of peers / personnel. The session will cover the continuum of stress; warning signs and responses to stress; common effects of stress on frontline workers; self-care techniques and skill building techniques to aid our teams through self care, support and assessments.

Operationalizing Climate Action – A Primer (Facilitation by: International Medical Corps)
The humanitarian sector is in the era of incorporating climate action into our programs and across our pursuits. In many of the geographic areas targeted by interventions led by PQMD’s members, larger numbers of people are likely to be severely affected by increases in water-borne and vector-borne diseases. The scientific consensus anticipates increases in the frequency and intensity of floods, extreme heat, wildfires and droughts, as well as increases in the intensity of tropical storms and the complexity and overlapping of disasters occurring simultaneously. Recognizing the profound threat that climate change poses to the communities with which our members work, this workshop will provide a high-level road map for how organizations, and the companies they partner with, can develop, implement and resource a multi-pronged approach to address the impacts of climate change – ultimately to better support the communities served as they adapt to changing healthcare needs in a hotter and more dangerous world. The session will cover areas such as: development of internal buy-in and working groups; measuring climate impact; program strategies for adaptation; capacity strengthening for local partners; and explore tools to measure the environmental impact of our own activities.