Uplifting women in healthcare: Insights from our UBS Optimus Foundation partners

Discover how Last Mile Health and Integrate Health are transforming access to healthcare in African communities by uplifting women and fostering innovation

11 Mar 2025

At UBS, we believe that everyone should have the same opportunity to maximize their wellbeing and contribute to the global economy. Together with our clients, we support organizations that invest in women to drive meaningful change. As we celebrate International Women's Day 2025, we are excited to highlight the incredible work of two UBS Optimus Foundation partners who are dedicated to uplifting women and girls around the world.

Research shows that empowering women increases productivity, enhances economic diversity, and improves household incomes. As the United Nations states, when women work, economies grow. Advancing the possibilities for women helps reduce poverty, raises child survival and life expectancy, expands employment opportunities, and decreases rates of child marriage.

To delve deeper into this topic, we asked Siobhan Kelley, senior director, global communications and advocacy at Last Mile Health, and Sahaletou Yelebo, global advocacy associate at Integrate Health, to discuss how their organizations are empowering women in healthcare communities.

Let's hear from them!

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1. For those not familiar with your work, please describe the problem you are trying to address.

Unfortunately, half the world’s population still lacks access to basic health services, including treatment for common childhood illnesses, family planning and prenatal care. Last Mile Health and Integrate Health are two organizations that are working to make quality primary healthcare accessible to all, through professional community health workers.

Siobhan Kelley: At Last Mile Health, we’re partnering with governments in Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, and Sierra Leone to equip professional community health workers (CHWs) that are bringing essential, primary healthcare to rural and remote communities. Our Africa Frontline First initiative is driving smarter, more effective financing to bring lifesaving care to millions across Africa.

Sahaletou Yelebo: With 20 years of experience, Integrate Health is saving lives in remote communities across Togo and Guinea, integrating professional community health workers into a strengthened public health system. We’ve helped transform lower-performing public health centers into life-saving centers of excellence.

2. Most community healthcare workers tend to be women. What are the biggest barriers they face, and how does your new 'Framework for Action: Achieving Gender Equity in the Community Health Workforce' aim to help address these challenges?

Women make up 70% of the community health workforce but all too often they face significant challenges because of their gender. These include being considered for jobs, securing family approval to work, staying safe while serving communities, and balancing household and job responsibilities. Additionally, they often receive low or no wages, and face limits on their career growth, as well as workplace discrimination.

By professionalizing community health workers, we can help women working in rural and remote communities to receive the salaries, supplies, supervision, and skills they need to do their jobs well and deliver high-quality care. Our Framework for Action offers a clear guide about the challenges faced by women community health workers and the steps needed to solve them.

It outlines the biggest issues across three key stages of their careers—retention, and advancement—then offers guidance for how stakeholders such as policymakers, funders, and implementers can each take steps to ensure community health workers receive fair pay, formal recognition, leadership opportunities, workplace protections, and the necessary resources to safely and effectively serve their communities.

3. What have been some of your biggest achievements to date in empowering women in healthcare communities?

Kelley: We recently teamed up with the Liberia Ministry of Health and partners to identify the barriers preventing women from moving into paid community health worker roles. This research helped to inform national policy changes, which led to greater recruitment and retention of women community health workers.

Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, we tailored our innovative in-person and digital training approach for the country’s all-female community health workforce. Since then, the workforce has been trained on topics like reproductive, maternal, and child health – and most recently on non-communicable diseases, which is the country’s first-ever training on NCDs.

Yelebo: We’ve focused our efforts on increasing the recruitment of women community health workers, integrating gender-responsive training, and strengthening systemic support. Our advocacy also contributed to national policy changes, including Togo's commitment to increase the number of women community health workers.

Unfortunately, we know there have been cases of gender-based violence, often as a result of shifting gender norms. To address this, we provide support to women who choose to file formal incident reports. community-based conflict resolution processes.

We also implement preventative training programs for men, non-violent communication, supportive family environment, human rights women’s right to work, as outlined in Togolese law. The evaluation has improvements in men's knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. the workforce due cases of violence.

4. How has the support of the UBS Optimus Foundation and client partnerships helped your work?

Kelley: The continued financial support of UBS Optimus Foundation over the past decade has enabled Last Mile Health to maintain our programming in Liberia and expand to several additional geographic regions. We appreciate the flexible and low-burden funding model that the foundation operates, because it allows us to focus on applying our resources as we feel is most appropriate to the programs at hand.

Yelebo: UBS-Optimus Foundation’s generous financial support of Integrate Health has enabled us to pursue our mission of healthcare for all while continuously improving how we apply a gender lens to our approach. Beyond financial contributions, we’ve received great support through dedicated staff like Marissa Leffler who has been a thought partner, strategic advisor and champion for us.

5. What are your key goals to advance equity for all community health workers, and how will the Framework for Action help?

The Framework for Action aims to support women community health workers across all stages of their careers. Our 16 recommendations to achieve gender equity in the community health workforce help governments, donors, and doers break down barriers that women face as professionals, from recruitment to retention.

Put simply, integrating a gender lens into policy, programming, and investment is essential for governments to achieve universal health coverage. Organizations and investors need to prioritize gender equity in every decision, ensuring that healthcare professionals, especially women, receive fair pay, leadership opportunities, and workplace protections. To get started, we encourage donors, governments, and doers to select a recommendation that resonates with your unique context and consider how to put the change into action.

A great first step is to include women community health workers in decision-making, and it’s an action to come back to when facing inevitable challenges. Ask women community health workers about their experiences, what they need, and follow their lead.

6. What one piece of advice would you give to Optimus Foundation and other organizations or investors looking to advance the capabilities of healthcare professionals? How can they support your efforts?

First, meaningful progress requires coordinated effort from an ecosystem of stakeholders: governments, funders, advocacy coalitions, researchers, and community health workers themselves. Collaboration is key.

In that spirit, when working with funders we aim to increase their awareness on integrating gender and health, to ensure investments prioritize gender-equitable programming. The Optimus Foundation and its partners can further support our efforts by championing gender-responsive funding, fostering collaboration, and centering in policy and program design. And of course, share the framework with your network!

7. How can people learn more about the work you’re doing to solve the healthcare challenges facing women and girls?

About UBS Optimus Foundation

Our UBS Optimus Foundation is proud to partner with like-minded philanthropists, investors, and organizations to make a significant difference in the wellbeing of thousands of girls and women across the globe. By supporting these initiatives, we are not only empowering women but also fostering a more inclusive and prosperous world for all.

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https://www.ubs.com/global/en/sustainability-impact/social-impact-and-philanthropy/optimus-foundation/our-focus-area.html

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Uplifting women in healthcare: Insights from our UBS Optimus Foundation partners

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