About

The healthcare advances of the past two decades have resulted in lifesaving improvements in the developing world. Despite dramatic gains – including an approximate 50 % reduction in maternal and child mortality – lack of access to essential healthcare remains a serious problem. Too often, programs target only specific health issues or diseases. In other cases, weak healthcare systems undermine well-meaning attempts to provide comprehensive, community-based health services.

Advancing Research on Community Health Systems (ARCHeS) addresses these urgent needs by promoting access to primary and reproductive healthcare by ensuring that countries have the technical and logistical know-how to provide it.

Founded in 2013 at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, ARCHeS builds on a legacy of more than three decades of work in Ghana and Tanzania in designing health systems interventions and measuring their impact on morbidity, mortality and on health systems performance. ARCHeS brings together the knowledge and expertise of health sector implementers and government partners with the research and evaluation expertise of population scientists and demographers.