ICMM members implement community health initiatives in a variety of settings across the globe addressing communicable diseases, maternal and perinatal conditions, nutritional deficiencies as well as non-communicable diseases.
Such community health initiatives can be categorised as follows:
Global and regional health initiatives usually characterised by investment in an existing programme.
Communicable disease control initiatives in Africa and Asia addressing diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria among employees, their families and local communities.
Primary health programmes implemented by third parties in settings where government health systems are relatively weak, such as around many mine sites in Africa.
Support for health programmes implemented by local government where district health authorities have sufficient capacity to directly manage the project, such as in Latin America and Southern Africa.
Specialised health interventions often targeting marginalised communities, usually in remote areas of developed countries.
Solution
Montrose conducted an analysis of ICMM member companies’ investments in community health in order to fully understand the range of health-related investments that mining companies are involved in to help support better decision making in allocating resources to health interventions.
The specific objectives were to:
Identify and review the range of health interventions and relationships that ICMM members are involved in, at either an operational, regional, country or international level
Understand the types of arrangements that are in place to deliver these health interventions, and in particular how partnership approaches have been structured
To consider how companies have approached engagement or involvement with public or private sector partners, NGOs, or beneficiaries in such interventions
To review the extent to which these health interventions have been undertaken in isolation from or connected into broader health systems or externally-led initiatives
The analysis was conducted through in-depth interviews and literature reviews and a lessons-learned document was produced, which describes the range of health interventions, the different categories or typology of health-related partnerships and other interventions identified, and was supported by a number of structured case studies.
Impact
Lessons learned informed individual members’ engagement in health-related interventions, and provided a platform for collective engagement between members and other stakeholders on health-related issues.
