Empowering Community Health Workers through mobile applications

The burgeoning field of mobile health has proven successful for data collection and centralizing health records and trends. However, little has been done to use the same mobile tools to improve Community Health Worker's access to vital health information. There is huge promise for mHealth to connect people in low literacy and low resource settings to relevant content, and empower them to make informed decisions. As a recognized leader of developing and distributing accessible, trusted health materials, Hesperian is in a unique position to explore how health content for this audience can be best designed for mobile devices. In 2011, Hesperian developed and tested a mobile app on Safe Pregnancy and Birth to demonstrate that clear, user-friendly, demystifying health information can be ‘chunked' for this new format. Results suggest these guidelines: include one illustration per screen (minimum); use simple language, avoid jargon, and define medical terms; provide sufficient content to demystify health information and help individuals make informed decisions. Looking at the strengths and limitations of mobile platforms, we determined there should be no more than two screen lengths of content per ‘page', and that multi-step processes should be broken into separate pages. Advantages include the ability to provide a guided experience with multiple ‘doors in' to content, and easy cross-referencing. We are excited to share lessons learned for designing and crafting empowering content for mobile devices, and shed light on how to create a more comprehensive communication system that takes advantage of mHealth content delivery.