Project Details
Description
eHealth Yabwela
Full title of the project: Development of a mHealth pathway to expand and enhance comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for young people in Zambia.
Existing research shows that digital technologies such as mobile phones and vending machines can support people to overcome barriers to health service access. However, ensuring that technologies and the digital care pathways they form a part of reflect place-based priorities and are attuned to people’s needs is vital to ensure subsequent implementation and use.
In this project we used community-based, participatory research methods to co-produce a service specification and technically functional prototype for a youth-friendly, digitally-supported care pathway that included: a mobile phone app for receiving sexual health test results; digital vending machines; and a web application for use in existing youth-friendly clinics.
Our Zambian youth co-design leads together with the study research staff chose the name ‘eHealth Yabwela’ for this project. Yabwela means ‘it has come’ or ‘it is has arrived’ in Nyanja (Chewa). In the context of eHealth Yabwela, the name can be interpreted as “eHealth has arrived” or “eHealth is here”. Nyanja is one of Zambia’s most widely spoken languages and a language commonly spoken in Lusaka along with Bemba.
Full title of the project: Development of a mHealth pathway to expand and enhance comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for young people in Zambia.
Existing research shows that digital technologies such as mobile phones and vending machines can support people to overcome barriers to health service access. However, ensuring that technologies and the digital care pathways they form a part of reflect place-based priorities and are attuned to people’s needs is vital to ensure subsequent implementation and use.
In this project we used community-based, participatory research methods to co-produce a service specification and technically functional prototype for a youth-friendly, digitally-supported care pathway that included: a mobile phone app for receiving sexual health test results; digital vending machines; and a web application for use in existing youth-friendly clinics.
Our Zambian youth co-design leads together with the study research staff chose the name ‘eHealth Yabwela’ for this project. Yabwela means ‘it has come’ or ‘it is has arrived’ in Nyanja (Chewa). In the context of eHealth Yabwela, the name can be interpreted as “eHealth has arrived” or “eHealth is here”. Nyanja is one of Zambia’s most widely spoken languages and a language commonly spoken in Lusaka along with Bemba.
Co-design leaders created a novel approach to co-producing digital innovation that was place-based and human-centred. They used community and arts-based methods to build the “e-Health Yabwela” pathway using role play and installations placed around the workshop space.
Over two phases, a further 56 young people joined us to co-design the pathway, test prototype technologies and deliberate together on local acceptability, viability and implementation requirements. By these means, young people informed all aspects of development from where vending machines should be located, to app features and functionalities to preferences for what kinds of products vending machines should dispense. The technologies developed are now ready for implementation and will be used in future research by our Zambian public health research partner Zambart.
The young people we worked with in eHealth Yabwela made a film to advocate for the work we did together which can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHisC--7Bx0
| Short title | eHealth Yabwela |
|---|---|
| Status | Finished |
| Effective start/end date | 1/08/22 → 31/01/24 |
Funding
- Medical Research Council
Keywords
- Health
- Zambia
- Sexual Health
- Reproductive Health
- Young People
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