JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The stigmatization around sexual health due to cultural, religious traditions and norms leads to myths and a lack of available information and resources of universal access to sexual and reproductive health services. Additional sexual health education not being part of the Kenya school curriculum leads to insufficient access to knowledge about safe contraception meth-ods, menstruation period knowledge and female genital mutilation. A digital tool could sup-port and provide education and information for universal equal access, addressing Sustaina-ble Development Goals 3, 4 and 5.

Objective:

The study targets the needed requirements to establish a reusable framework for a successful accessibility of a digital web-based application and the behavioral intention to use it for sex-ual health information. Targeted are mainly young women in Kenya.

Methods:

The recognized Double Diamond Model deriving the problem room as Discover and Define phase, enriched with cultural aspects, and modeled to a self-expanded Intercultural Research Model, is used for a user-centered Design Thinking approach to create a requirement analy-sis, as future framework. A qualitative content analysis for semi-structured interviews is pi-loted according to COREQ guidelines for problem identification, followed by expert inter-views. As sample size, twelve pilot interviews (N=12) and five expert interviews (N=5) were determined by data saturation. Coded and analyzing according affinity mapping method.

Results:

No interest in a reproductive and special pregnancy tracking application is shown by women in Kenya. The Requirement Engineering Analysis show potential and limitations of a digital sexual health education tool. Limitation caused by conservative cultural background, classic text communication and the influence of social affiliations within society was evidenced in this project. Resulting in enhanced requirements of visual and auditory channels and the need of a fictional character in the tool.

Conclusions:

The developed Intercultural Research Model enables detailed implications to overcome hur-dles and give potential implications towards needed requirements for successful implementa-tion. Women from social conservative backgrounds or resource-poor circumstances, cannot benefit. The scientific work gives impetus, as integrating culture-specific aspects in the de-sign process that helps to provide sexual health education in a digital and mobile form, when accessibility is granted. Clinical Trial: This research study reports the results of a health care intervention on human participants. The study is conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved and registered in an appropriate registry by the Institutional Ethics Committee of Wit-ten/Herdecke University with protocol code: S-119/2022 and date of approval: 06.08.2022.