WITH HEALTH care costs on the rise, how can poor families avail of the health resources that they need?
This was the concern of 12 senior students and several faculty members of the Health Sciences Department as they launched a health care program geared towards helping the poor families in Barangay Pansol, Quezon City. Dubbed Project LAAN, the program was officially launched last December 10 at the Blessed Peter Faber Hall.
Using social media and other innovative means, the project seeks to improve health resources for 1,200 families of Barangay Pansol by making PhilHealth insurance available to them. Alongside its partner, the Kaya Natin! Movement, Project LAAN’s strategy is to advertise the cause through different social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, in order to grab people’s attention and engage them into action.
“Many families are vulnerable to health costs,” said project manager Gerry Alcantara. “Treatment costs and health costs can wipe out savings of many families.”
Barangay Pansol Captain Dominic Flores said that some residents live in generally depressed areas and are informal settlers. Most, he said, could not afford to pay for their own health services.
Donations and education
Project LAAN began from an idea of Health Sciences Department faculty member Dr. John Wong.
“He recognized the power of social media in our country… and saw how this could be harnessed to achieve the goal of the current administration towards universal health care,” said health sciences senior Stacey Militante, one of the project’s proponents.
According to the project’s Facebook page, the founders felt that merely studying diseases is insufficient. Instead, they saw a need to “address the increasing burden of disease in the country [through] innovation and entrepreneurship in health.”
The project aims to raise P1.44 million to enroll Barangay Pansol into the Sponsored Program of PhilHealth. It will then expand to collaborate with more communities across the country.
Aside from this, the project aims to educate beneficiaries about the value of health insurance, its benefits and how to use these.
While the project is gaining ground through its propagation in social media, Militante said that this did not automatically gain them financial support.
“People share it on Facebook or Twitter, yes, but I wish that the shares could also translate to donations in order to really help the families in Pansol,” she added.
Hopeful
But the project’s proponents remain optimistic about the future of their project, saying that they are hopeful that it will continue even after the senior founders have graduated.
“What keeps us going, I believe, is each member’s conviction that this project is actually going somewhere,” Militante said. She added that hearing the stories of how the residents struggle with meeting health care costs has inspired them to continue with the program.
“Health insurance could have saved [their sick], but they had none,” she said.
