Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Nov 6, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 17, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Multidisciplinary Approach to the Development of Digital Health Messages for Rural Populations in Tanzania
ABSTRACT
Background:
Health workers have traditionally delivered health promotion and education to rural communities in the Global South in paper leaflet formats or orally. With the rise of digital technologies, health promotion and education can be provided in innovative and more effective formats, which are believed to have a higher impact on disease prevention and treatment.
Objective:
Using a multidisciplinary approach, the objective of this project was to develop short and simple digital health educational messages for prevention and control of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Taenia solium cysticercosis/taeniosis and anthrax for rural communities in Tanzania.
Methods:
The multidisciplinary team of the Non-discriminating Access for Digital Inclusion (DigI) project digitalised and customised available government-approved paper-based health promotion messages into a screen suitable format. The team worked closely together and utilised its diverse expertise to develop the digital health messages with disease-specific content, in Tanzania's national language (Swahili) as well as English. The development process included the following phases: 1) a local needs assessment; 2) identification of government-approved health promotion materials in a non-digital format; 3) identification of key health messages for each of the five relevant domains (prevalence, cause/transmission, signs/symptoms, treatment and prevention); 4) creation of a practical and engaging story, easy to understand for the general public; 5) drafting of a storyboard for an animated video with review, feedback and revisions; 6) forward and backward translation from English to Swahili; 7) audio recording of the story in both languages; 8) finalisation and presentation for the animations; 9) development of relevant quiz questions related to the health messages in each domain; and 10) development of web and mobile applications to access the digital health messages.
Results:
Between 2017 and 2019, we developed key health messages, quizzes and animated health videos to address HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Taenia solium cysticercosis/taeniosis and anthrax, which are all of public health importance in Tanzania. The four videos and other contents are available on a digital health platform (DigI platform), established by the DigI project, in both Swahili and English.
Conclusions:
Our methodological multidisciplinary approach ensures that the digital health messages for the public are clear, high quality and align with the government objectives for health promotion. It also demonstrates the diversity of scientific disciplines required when collaborating on a digital health project. We recommend this approach to be applied to the development of other digital health messages for a wide range of diseases.
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