mHealth and Grassroots Community Empowerment

Hesperian

One of the considerable advantages of mHealth as a tool for community health outreach is that information available via mobile phone can reach many more people than other methods of communication, such as the Internet or even books. But when health workers look at their phones, what kind of information are they getting? Can they apply the information they read to their situations? Do they feel empowered to take action?

For over forty years, Hesperian Health Guides has been developing and distributing books that contain health information written in a heavily illustrated, narrative style that is understandable and accessible even for those with minimal formal education. Each book is extensively field tested by community health workers, to ensure that the end user dictates the creation of the product.

Now we are using this proven public health content to create an mHealth app first for iPhone, then for Android, that will foster understanding and action in poor and marginalized communities. Our pilot app features information about maternal health, including staying health during pregnancy and danger signs during pregnancy, birth, and after birth. In under-resourced communities in the global South, having this information to enhance training for heatlh care providers can save the lives of mothers and children.

For many of these providers such as NGOs or community clinics, Hesperian books have been a source of rich educational material and have served as resources to increase capacity for addressing community health needs. This app will give these health providers another tool for creating their own training materials, handouts, posters, and also for building other mobile health projects on other types of mobile phones.

Based on the feedback on this initial pilot app, Hesperian hopes to investigate preparing more of our life-saving content to support the further development of mHealth applications.