Re: https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/lancet-offline-ten-lessons-womens-and-c...
Dear Jihane Adebo,
Thank you for sharing your experience in Togo regarding health education for patients/general public.
You note: "The solution we've found at our center is to create a group where we provide education on a different illness each week (symptoms, warning signs, appropriate actions, and when to seek medical help)."
I look forward to learn more about your methods and invite other HIFA members to share their approaches to health education.
Your HIFA profile describes 'providing educational content on health to women's groups' as one of your professional interests. This has been a major area of research by Anthony Costello and others. Participatory women's groups have been shown to be 'a cost-effective strategy to improve maternal and neonatal survival in low-resource settings'. See for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673613606856?utm_...
Have women's participatory groups 'taken off' in the light of this compelling research?
Additionally, with the increasing availability of smartphones and internet connectivity there is potential to have reliable, relevant content at hand, as and when it is needed. I look forward to hear more about different approaches to meet information needs.
Indeed the problem is perhaps not so much that information is not available - it is that too much content of variable relevance and quality is available, and it is often impossible for users to identify reliable information among the sea of misinformation, especially on social media.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org