Health Education in Rural Communities with Locally Produced and Locally Relevant Multimedia Content

Abstract

Health education in rural communities is one of the main ways in which developing countries are addressing prevalent health issues like maternal and child mortality, HIV/Aids, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. In many rural villages, Community Health Workers (CHWs) act as proxies through which health education information is spread in their communities. In this paper, we discuss important principles to consider when designing solutions for creating and distributing digital health content in rural communities, based on previous work in the area of health education and the training of CHWs. We then introduce our model of content creation and distribution, which involves providing tools that allow rural health professionals to independently create health content from within their local communities. We also present the lessons learned from our deployment of this model in Lesotho - highlighting the opportunities presented by the use of locally produced hence locally relevant digital content in health education.