This publication describes the development and implementation of the Colombia Rural Vital (CRV) strategy developed as part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative. In Colombia, one of the Initiative’s aims is to address the systematic underreporting of vital events (births and deaths) in rural areas and ethnic communities that are hard to reach to provide institutional assistance. By doing so, the Colombian government is ensuring that civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) services are more equitably accessible to their underserved populations.
The CRV strategy integrates innovative methodologies for the retrieval of vital events such as the systematic crosschecking of institutional databases, the notification of cases through cell phones and the application of automated verbal autopsy (VA) to determine the probable cause of deaths for deaths occurring in the community. In addition, recommendations for CRV strategy scale-up are summarized.