Health in Your Hands (Salud en tus Manos)

Morbidity and mortality associated with inadequate and nonexistent hand hygiene has an expansive impact worldwide. This project focuses on the problem of marginal or non-existent use of hand- hygiene in rural communities due to inadequate sanitation infrastructure, deficient hygiene knowledge, and the inconvenience of washing hands with local soaps that are designed for dishes and clothes. The Health in your Hands Program (Salud en tus Manos) is designed to decrease the complexity of hand hygiene for rural inhabitants living in developing countries, with corresponding reductions in sanitation related diseases. This will be achieved through the introduction of a simple, attractively branded, accessible, and context-appropriate hand-sanitizer technology program with a comprehensive education and support system that will ensure it's effective implementation and long term success.
The program will partner with three key organizations in Mexico to reduce diseases associated with hand hygiene, providing a comprehensive solution for mothers and their young children and children attending rural schools. It includes the provision of hand sanitizer, coupled with context specific delivery methods and educational support to:

• Maximize the capacity and effectiveness of existing education-based hygiene programs with regards to increasing hand-hygiene behaviors.

• Create alternatives that make the process of daily hygiene routines easier and more attractive to target groups through improved product attributes and presentation.

• Refine our past successful hygiene programs with expanded partnerships to create a model that is increasingly scalable, broadly applicable, efficient, cost effective and sustainable for use throughout Mexico and worldwide.

Principal Investigator: Fermin Reygadas, UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Group
Field Location: Baja California Sur and Yucatan, Mexico