Hesperian health guides are developed for communities with limited access to health care. To ensure the conditions and concerns of the people who will use them are at the center of the book development process, our materials are field-tested around the world by grassroots community organizations, health providers, clinics, and individuals. By presenting accurate and actionable health information in a simple, heavily illustrated style, Hesperian makes health information accessible to all, even readers with minimal formal education. We are working to further increase access to our materials through our interactive digital resource center. You can read more about each of our projects by clicking on the links below:
Helping Children Live with HIV
The New Where There Is No Doctor
Community Action for Women’s and Girls’ Health and Empowerment
A Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety
Hesperian Digital Commons
Helping Children Live with HIV
This child health manual for community health workers, family members, and caregivers will include information on the prevention of HIV infection in babies, community-based pediatric diagnosis and treatment, and care of HIV-positive babies and children, with strategies for addressing the psychosocial needs of children affected by HIV, including how to talk to children about HIV and provide emotional support.
The New Where There Is No Doctor
Hesperian is developing a new 21st-century edition of our hallmark publication to address global health challenges that were not present when Where There Is No Doctor was written. This resource will retain the comprehensive approach, practicality, and accessibility of the original book while integrating new information on the mostly preventable and treatable diseases that continue to take an enormous toll on the world’s poorest people. View advance chapters of the New Where There Is No Doctor here.
Community Action for Women’s and Girls’ Health and Empowerment
Social barriers and unexamined attitudes and practices often prevent effective use of women’s health information. This guide for community organizing and activism will complement Where Women Have No Doctor by providing tools, activities, and accounts of successful work all over the world by women and their allies to challenge violence against women, analyze harmful effects of gender roles, promote strategies for better sexual health, improve access to family planning, and foster safe motherhood.
A Workers’ Guide to Health and Safety
Easy-to-read and heavily illustrated, this guide will offer information about and solutions to common hazards found in export factories. In addition to addressing occupational health hazards it also focuses on “social hazards” such as sexual harassment and other gender-related abuses, child labor, poverty wages and human rights violations, and provides tools for organizing and leading labor and occupational health campaigns. Read an advance section of the book here and a pamphlet on fighting factory fires here.
Hesperian Digital Commons
The Hesperian Digital Commons is an ongoing collaborative project to re-imagine our widely known and trusted print materials through the innovative use of digital technology. While continuing to publish books, we now offer our content in a variety of new formats, along with digital tools that further empower people to adapt and share our materials on line. The Digital Commons includes an online image library; Hesperian materials in an easy-to-access wiki-based format; Hesperian materials in 26 languages; a mobile application for iPhone; and a simple web-based workshop for creating flyers and posters. Hesperian invites you to support the expansion of the Hesperian Digital Commons – as a partner, a volunteer, or a donor. For more information, please click here.