Lessons from a decade's research on poverty alleviation

1. Using Mobile Technology
to Build the Capacity of
Community health
Workers
Niall Winters, Dept. of Education, Univ. of
Oxford
Alice Lakati , Amref Health Africa

2. The mCHW project
• University of Oxford
– Dr Niall Winters
– Dr Anne Geniets
– Olajide Jolugbo
– Jade Vu Henry
– Laurenz Langer
– Laura Hakimi
• University College London (LKL, IOE)
– Prof. Martin Oliver
– Jade Vu Henry
– Isabella Rega
• Amref Health Africa (Kenya)
– Dr Alice Lakati
– Caroline Mbindyo
– Hannah Wanjiru
– Simon Mbae
• All CHVs, CHEWs, CHCs & PHOs

3. Aims
• To design, develop, implement and evaluate a
mobile learning intervention to support the
professional education of CHVs and CHEWs
• By doing so:
– Contribute to the evidence base on the effectiveness
of mobile-based activities to increase CHWs'
capabilities through CHEW supervision/mentorship
and peer learning
• To determine how mobile based supervision and
training can be embedded within existing local
primary health infrastructure

4. Amref health Africa -Oxford-UCL Partnership
• Engage with the community
• Strengthen community system (through
mobile)
• Training CHVs and CHEWs
• Research to inform practice in the African
context
• Innovative exploratory research investing how
to move the mHealth forward

5. Project Sites

7. CHW
(20 ->100)
CHEW
(8 ->10)

8. • Supports referral decision making
• Feedback from supervisors

9. Participatory Action Research

15. Findings
• Improvement of CHV Skills and Practice
– Training in and increased knowledge of
development of children <5 years and
developmental milestones – no previous training
– Improved referral decision making and monitoring
– Increased informed referral
– Training of CHVs and CHEWs in how to use
technology and smartphones
– Knowledge transfer between communities
(Whatsapp and Exchange visits)

16. • “From the App, you can really be able to
understand the practices of the CHVs in the
households. How do they come with the
decisions to the households, because the
application give them that opportunity to make
a decision and actually to document - the whole
processes of documenting. How the decision
came by. […] So from the app, they have a series
of questions which I can look at and eventually
when they make a decision, I can be able to
infer those decisions from whatever question
they have filled in their App.” - CHEW

17. • Transfer of policy into practice?
• Community versus system strengthening?
• Scale and/versus marginalisation?

18. Policy Practice Impact (on the ground)
mCHW
County
Sub-county
??

19. Thank you!
• http://www.mchw.org
|@m_CHW
• niall.winters@educatio
n.ox.ac.uk | @nwin
• alice.lakati@amref.org
| @sipiyian