Clubfoot is a treatable birth defect affecting over one million children around the world.
MiracleFeet provides organizational, technical, and financial support to clinics throughout the world in order to provide treatment to children born with clubfoot. The treatment costs, on average, only $250 per child and is free or extremely low-cost for the families who receive it.
The MiracleFeet Model
Using a bottom-up approach, MiracleFeet offers a continuous cycle of support for the treatment of children. By 2020 we will have supported over 50,000 children.
MiracleFeet provides the technical and financial resources needed to create and support high-quality clubfoot clinics in low income countries. Support usually includes:
- Identifying local partners
- Training healthcare workers and practitioners in the Ponseti Method
- Hiring and training parent educators to increase treatment compliance
- Providing treatment supplies, including braces
- Establishing systems to collect and analyze patient and clinic-level data to monitor quality and measure impact
MiracleFeet expands access to proper treatment. Strategies include:
- Creating early diagnosis and referral processes
- Executing clubfoot awareness campaigns
- Educating healthcare workers about clubfoot
- Adding more clinics to reduce travel time for families
- Conducting refresher and advanced Ponseti training
MiracleFeet integrates clubfoot programs in the local health system in order to promote lasting and sustainable change. We do this by:
- Securing endorsement and support from the Ministry of Health
- Embedding clubfoot management into the existing public health infrastructure to drive down cost/child and minimize long-term dependence on MiracleFeet
- Collaborating closely with government agencies, NGOs and private partners to reduce need for outside support
MiracleFeet has been featured in many major news outlets, including:
“Look, helping people is complicated. But I’m a strong advocate of more aid because sometimes aid is transformative. When properly done, clubfoot treatment is straightforward, succeeds 95 percent of the time and inexpensively changes a life.”
~ Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times