Journal Supplement Explores Community Case Management as Method of Saving Millions of Lives.

Davidson Hamer, a professor of international health and medicine at Boston University School of Public Health, teamed with three guest editors to compile a full journal supplement to the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

 The special supplement highlights the potential benefits of integrated community case management (CCM) to treat deadly childhood infections and was released on Monday, Nov. 12 to coincide with World Pneumonia Day, designed to foster awareness of the world’s largest killer of children.

Supplement co-editor David Marsh, senior advisor for child survival at Save the Children, wrote on the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation ‘Impatient Optimist’ blog that the supplement was the first collection of articles and essays to focus exclusively on the “impact, effects, and challenges of CCM – while offering guidance on how to effectively implement it. “

Researchers believe that expanding the range and scope of CCM may yield substantial reductions in child deaths when community health practitioners are given proper training, adequate supplies and ample support. The CCM approach can enable community health workers to treat childhood diseases in their own communities where access to conventional heath care may be limited.

In the supplement’s preface, Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, said CCM strategies can likely help the agency achieve one of its most pressing goals: to reduce the wide gap in child mortality between the richest and poorest nations.

BUSPH is part of a global CCM Task Force charged with research and analysis of CCM methods and outcomes, along with the World Health Organization’s Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, the United States Agency for International Development, Save the Children, and Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet.