HAPSA is a health systems innovation organization working to strengthen the chain of emergency care in Nepal. We develop community-based health programs, generate evidence of what works, and assemble proven approaches into models that districts and government can adopt and sustain.
Answering a different call.
Most public health programs work upstream through interventions that reduce the incidence of disease and injury. But emergency care answers a different call. When a person is thrown from a motorcycle, a farmer is bitten by a snake, or someone collapses from cardiac arrest, survival is often decided within minutes.
These are preventable deaths. We prevent them by being ready to respond when a crisis occurs.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link...
Emergency care is a chain: the bystander who starts CPR, the responder who controls the bleeding, the hospital ready to receive the patient. A defibrillator cannot help someone who received no CPR while waiting for it. A trauma surgeon cannot save someone who bled out on the road. And in rural Nepal, where the nearest hospital equipped to treat trauma can be 9 or 10 hours away, the chain is stretched to its limit. Every link has to hold. That is why HAPSA works on three different links at once: the community, the health workforce, and the system.
Three Links of Emergency Care
We empower community members with lifesaving skills so that they can go from being bystanders to taking an active role in emergency response.
Nepal Life Savers Program:
Choking First Aid and Airway Management
Hands-Only CPR Techniques
Severe Bleeding Control
We build the capacity of health providers and facilities to deliver quality care through training, mentorship, technology, and practical systems.
Programs:
Point-Of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS)
Lifelong Emergency Education Didactic (LEED)
Poison Education Webinar Series
Lead Poisoning: Research, Advocacy, and Clinical Training
Annual Rural Trauma Workshop
Fellowship Program
We lay down the infrastructure and advocate for policy that makes change possible and creates a better future for emergency response.
Programs:
Poison Center Collaborative (PCC)
AED Mapping and Public Access Defibrillation
Snakebite GIS Mapping
Emergency Capacity Assessment
District Emergency Care Models
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Get in Touch
Feel free to contact us for any inquiries or to learn more about our current programs and research projects. Let us know if your organization would like to receive CPR & Choking First Aid training!