Lomi Desse

SHERA DIBANDIBAN, Ethiopia - Seventy-one kilometers southeast of Addis Ababa, the country capital, two of the country's 45,000 health extension workers said it wouldn't be hard to find a model family among this village's 639 families.

That's because all 639 were model families, they said.

It was kind of hard to believe. I had traveled out of Addis, on a trip sponsored by the Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Health, to learn more about the country's so-called model families, and was expecting to see an exemplary model family. I was curious as to what one a model.

Just a day before, Health Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had told me that the model families were the leading edge of his ministry's five-year efforts toward health reform.

In Shera Dibandiban's tiny three-room health post, Almaz Alemu, 22, and Lomita Bekene, 26, said that all the village's families had met three-quarters of the 16 requirements under the country's model family plan, and thus qualified for the designation "model family" as well as becoming eligible for such prizes as large blue water jugs. The requirements included HIV prevention, knowing first aid and emergency measures, immunizing all children, and seeing a health worker during pregnancies.

But not all families met 90 percent of the criteria, they said. In fact, 338 had - a little more than half.

"There is a kind of healthy competition among families to become a model family that meets all the requirements," said Alemu.

They called them Tier 1 and Tier 2 families. I decided they needed a better name: Super Model Families (SMFs).

They took me to a SMF, the home of Lomi Desse, 38, the mother of seven children aged 20 to six. Desse's green-painted cinder-block home was set among orange and raspberry flowering bushes. Two cats sunned in her doorway. Someone washed dishes in a sink (with running water) along the side of the house. The sky was blue. The weather was warm enough for short sleeves.

"This is one of the most beautiful homes I've seen in rural Africa," said Dominic Chavez, a photographer and my traveling partner.

It was true. The model family had a model home.

And that, it turns out, is part of the idea.

"Being a model family means we practice good health, that we have good agriculture, and we keep the house very clean," said Desse. "By doing this, we are also keeping the community clean."

To read more of Donnelly's blog post, please see The Global Health Council's orginal article.