Hello and Happy Holidays!

Thank you for being on this journey with us! Your support gives us the ability and resources to implement HERA for Syrian refugees and other displaced people around the world.

Here is your quarterly 2-minute read on how our team is building HERA

Highlights:

• HERA was a guest lecturer at Harvard School of Public Health in Prof. Rifat Atun’s class Innovation and Global Health Systems, where he spoke to the next generation of students on how applications like HERA are important in modernizing our healthcare systems.

• We are happy to announce that HERA has been selected as one of 20 organizations in Turn.io Chat for Impact Accelerator 2022! Our CEO will participate in boot camps hosted by Turn.io in partnership with WhatsApp. Read more here:bit.ly/3CWIYwo and watch our Turn.io HERA overview here.

• We received @mondaydotcom Digital Lift Software Grant! This support will enable us to connect with our team all around the world by using @NotionHQ project management software. Read more here: digital-lift.org/grants/

• HERA is now on Goodsted! We will use this application to post volunteer opportunities. You can find and follow our profile!

• HERA participated in Refugee Week this past June, we presented our virtual #tech4refugees pitch with Techfugees, see out pitch under Challenge#2: Access to Health! Read more here: https://techfugees.com/all_news/here-are-9-of-the-most-innovative-new-projects-using-tech-to-help-refugees-and-ngos/…

• Our founder Dr. Aral presented at our CFO Mike Kautz's church, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem. Topic: The uses of digital and mobile health tools in humanitarian contexts and for forcibly displaced populations. He also presented a fundraising link for those in attendance.

• In the News! Our founder Dr. Aral Surmeli and HERA volunteer Selin were invited as guests on Radio Nasaem. Aral and Selin discussed HERA's mission and our work in Turkey. You can listen to the entire record here: https://www.facebook.com/radio.nasaem/videos/413219647684957/ adio.nasaem/videos/413219647684957/

• The entire HERA team hosted an all-staff, all-volunteer meeting in November. This was a fantastic opportunity to see and hear from team members across the world ,and learn about their contributions to HERA.

New addition to our growing team!

• Muath Khatib, Software Developer: Muath has joined HERA as a software engineer,he will be working with HERA on building features and improvements using JavaScript and Python. Muath graduated from Al-Aqsa University with a bachelor's in Teaching Technology and is a graduate of Code Academy Bootcamp at Gaza SkyGeeks, technologies.

Tech Updates:

1. Now users can receive direct reminders via WhatsApp without having to keep the app open.

2. Users will now be prompted questions about their pregnancy check-up or vaccination appointments via WhatsApp.

3. Health Centers directory and list automatically loaded from UNHCR's public database.

Asks:

• Help our mission by donating monthly to HERA!

• Please follow us on social media:

  • HERA Facebook > https://www.facebook.com/HeraDigitalHealth

  • HERA Twitter > https://twitter.com/HERA_dHealth

  • HERA Instagram > https://www.instagram.com/heradigitalhealth

  • HERA Youtube> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkQ1ovuIV8qg7lezNgc6w2w

We have a newly published paper!

Meyer CL, Surmeli A, Hoeflin Hana C and Narla NP (2022) Perceptions on a mobile health intervention to improve maternal child health for Syrian refugees in Turkey: Opportunities and challenges for end-user acceptability. Front. Public Health 10:1025675. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1025675

Read our new paper here, you can also read recent HERA announcements on our website.

Thank you again for your continued support. Please follow us online for more updates as we continue to grow. We look forward to our first update in 2023!

Best, 

Aral Surmeli

CEO and Co-Founder of HERA, Inc.

HERA Board of Directors:

Neeru Narla MD, MPH Chief Medical Officer

Mike Kautz, Chief Financial Officer

Kristyn Anderson, Chief Operating Officer

The HERA app is available for iOS and Android