The mHealth Compendium series has expanded the body of knowledge and increased access to the most current information on mobile technology solutions for health (mHealth). Each volume links users to key tools and resources, and serves as a significant resource for mHealth information. The mHealth Compendium Special Edition 2016: Reaching Scale presents ten in-depth profiles of programs previously featured in the mHealth Compendium that have grown in scale over time. These case studies include details of the process, challenges, and lessons learned in growing an mHealth program.
Archives for May 2016
Community Consultations on Humanitarian Aid: Overall Findings (World Humanitarian Summit Research Paper 2016)
In preparation for the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), the WHS secretariat commissioned Ipsos to conduct community consultations with crisis-affected communities in multiple focus countries. The countries chosen for the consultations were Afghanistan, Guinea, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine, representing a diverse range of geographic regions, humanitarian contexts, and actors.
Ipsos conducted semi-structured interviews and community workshops in each country to gain in-depth information on how affected communities respond to crises, the role they see for international humanitarian responders, issues related to service delivery, and ways to improve identified shortcomings within the humanitarian system.
This complements the consultations with crisis-affected communities and stakeholder groups which took place in previous years and which were synthesized in the report, “Restoring Humanity: Global Voices Calling for Action.” This report highlighted the importance of involving marginalized populations such as women, children, the elderly, the disabled, and displaced persons, and focusing on security, dignity, and economic opportunity, emphasizing: “People’s safety and dignity must be considered the primary aim of humanitarian activity, regardless of the context or actor.”
Click here for full paper.
Curbing corruption and fostering accountability in fragile settings – why an imperilled media needs better support (BBC Media Action Working Paper 2016)
This policy working paper draws on BBC Media Action’s own research as well as the wider sector to examine the media’s ability to hold power to account, particularly in fragile settings. The paper provides a summary of the evidence base supporting the media’s role in tackling corruption and argues that effective media support strategies require more than financial contributions. They require the development of coherent, context-specific, evidence-based strategies rooted in learning from what works and what does not. It concludes that while there have been notable investments in media from a small number of donors the development system as a whole has a poor record in in supporting this area. The paper should be of interest to decision makers in donors and other development support organisations concerned about the development costs of corruption.
Can behaviour change approaches improve the cleanliness and functionality of shared toilets? A randomised control trial in Dhaka, Bangladesh (WSUP Discussion Paper 2016)
Households living in densely populated urban slums often lack the space for their own toilet, making shared sanitation the only viable solution. This is the situation in Dhaka, where many of the city’s low-income residents depend on one of the city’s enormous number of shared compound toilets: a recent study by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research Bangladesh (icddr,b) estimated that 4.3 million people in Dhaka use such facilities. While shared compound toilets can play a central role in urban sanitation provision, it is notoriously difficult to keep these facilities clean and well-maintained, leading to an unhygienic and unpleasant user experience and often to under-use or eventual abandonment.
As part of its 2012 – 2015 DFID-funded research programme, WSUP commissioned a research project in Dhaka to explore behaviour change strategies to help users keep their toilets clean and functional. The study aimed to design, pilot and rollout low-cost behaviour change messaging approaches and associated simple hardware provision. The research team used a randomised control trial (RCT) design to evaluate the impact of the intervention on toilet cleanliness and other metrics. The results indicate that this type of behaviour change approach can be strongly beneficial to shared toilet cleanliness and functionality.
This Discussion Paper presents the context, methodology, results and conclusions of the study. The paper is derived from the final report of researchers from icddr,b, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Click here for full details.
Words of Relief – Ebola Learning Review (Translators without Borders 2015)
This review examines Translators without Borders’ initiative aimed at improving communication with communities during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from November 2014 to February 2015. The review captures examples of good practice, gaps and suggestions for improvement in Translators without Borders’ approach to the Ebola response. Among others, the review acknowledges that commitment by humanitarian agencies to address language barriers and information needs was seen during the Ebola crisis. However, more work remains to be done to advocate and raise awareness for the use of local language in humanitarian response. There is a need to change current approaches to ensure that providing information and communication in languages people can understand is considered a priority in humanitarian response.