Child healthcare workers in resource-limited areas improve health with innovative low-cost projects.

Most child health workers in resource-limited communities are dedicated, imaginative, innovative practitioners with ideas that would improve the care of children and families. However, they often lack experience in seeking funds and implementing their ideas. In 2006, the Section on International Child Health in the American Academy of Pediatrics launched a program, I-CATCH to fill this gap. The program provides mentors to assist in writing a proposal for the community-conceived and community-driven idea to improve child health, makes a small amount of funds available to the selected proposals, and offers mentors to help with the project's implementation. To date, 29 projects in 20 different non-industrialized countries have been funded. The impressive results achieved by the four completed and three ongoing projects are presented.