Leaders should push for more frontline health workers

"Innovation can transform a company, a culture, and even the world. But innovation doesn't have to come in the form of a gadget. It can come in the form of a smiling neighbor knocking at a family's door, toting some basic supplies and the skills to address matters of life and death," Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation writes in a Huffington Post opinion piece.

"If more leaders work together to deploy more frontline health workers, more women and children will survive. But they also should ensure better support for those already on the front lines" by using "[n]ew ways of thinking and new policies [that] are allowing health workers with shorter training periods and appropriate on-the-job supervision to do more tasks -- such as prescribing antibiotics and even performing caesarean sections," she writes, concluding, "That's the kind of innovation that can drive down health care costs while racking up results" (9/15).