“goodlife. live It well.”: Best practice for scaling up health communication for national level impact across multiple health topics in Ghana

Background: Vertical interventions often lead to competing messages and duplication of efforts. While integrated approaches risk diffuse messaging resulting in a lack of behavioral impact and intensity on any one issue. “GoodLife. Live it Well.” is an innovative initiative that balances these approaches to achieve intensity, integration and impact. Activities: The “GoodLife” initiative has been implemented from 2010 to present. “GoodLife” unifies multiple health promotion interventions in the areas of family planning, maternal and child health, malaria, nutrition, childhood diarrhea using multiple channels including interpersonal, community and mass media. Methods: Independent data sources were used to evaluate the intervention to date, including: survey data (2008 GDHS, 2011 MICS, 2012 Omnibus), and health service statistics. Results: Evidence suggests that “GoodLife” has made significant contributions to improving population health indicators across multiple health topics. Modern contraceptive use has increased from 17% to 23% from 2008 to 2011. In 2012, women exposed to GoodLife were significantly more likely to use FP than those not exposed (38% vs 25%). Sales of zinc tablets increased by 280% after the campaign as compared to before (8.1 million vs. 2.9 million tablets). Over 60% of women exposed to the malaria campaign were more likely to own an LLIN than those not exposed (48%). Regional blood donation increased by 53% after the campaign as compared to before from 9141 to 13,972 pints. Implications: The innovative strategy of the “GoodLife” initiative achieves a synergy between the strengths of the vertical and integrated approaches resulting in population impact.