Health
Empowering Communities, Improving Quality of Life
Health program
Our health programming focuses on health promotion, disease prevention and wellness in the area of HIV/AIDs and Reproductive Health programs focusing on keeping people healthy. The health promotion program aims to engage and empower individuals and communities to choose healthy behaviors, and make changes that reduce the risk of contracting HIV, developing chronic diseases and other morbidities. We enable people to increase control over their own health, through covers a wide range of social and environmental interventions at the household level, that are designed to benefit and protect individual people’s health and quality of life by addressing and preventing the root causes of ill health.
We focus on the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions in which people are born, grow, and live that affect health status, and engage people to modify risk behaviors such as substance abuse, poor eating habits, and lack of physical activity, which contribute to the development of chronic disease.
Typical DTO activities for health promotion, disease prevention, and wellness programs include:
Communication:
Raising awareness about healthy behaviors for the general public using communication strategies including public service announcements, health fairs, mass media campaigns, and health chats with SHG groups.
Education:
Empowering behavior change and actions through increased knowledge through health education strategies including, trainings of staff, and People Institutions.
Policy, Systems, and Environment:
Supporting systematic changes in implementation of health related laws, rules, and regulations (policy), and ensuring functional organizational components and systems in community health facilities, and encouraging changes in the economic, social, or physical environment – to encourage, make available, and enable healthy choices.
We take the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support component of the health program to be part of the wellness agenda, and more of a cross-cutting issue that is tailored and mainstreamed in all group and people institutional activities. Group members offer each other group support that is not specialized, yet very vital in helping individuals recover and heal from their painful experiences within their home settings and in the community.
Our Areas of Operations
DTO operates in Gulu City, Gulu, and Nwoya districts in addressing health needs, human rights, and livelihoods concerns amongst the poorest of the poor, vulnerable and marginalized populations in target locations of operation. In the next six years (2023 – 2029), DTO will expand operations to cover the districts of Amuru, Omoro, Pader, Kitgum, Lamwo and Agago, as permitted by the National NGO Bureau.