Mobile-izing Health Information for Women and Girls
- Health care
- Health education
- Maternal health
- Information & communication technology
- Reproductive health
- Technology
- Women's issues
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
Zena
Herman
Hesperian Health Guides
, CA, Berkeley, Alameda County
More than 5 years
Hesperian’s work has been featured in the New York Times and honored with recognition from President Bill Clinton, the United Nations Association, and the Communication Initiative Network, and with restricted funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hesperian Health Guides has a four-star rating on Charity Navigator.
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Operating for less than a year
Access to education/training, Access to health care.
Since the Safe Pregnancy and Birth mobile app was released for iPhone in January 2012, and for Android four months later, it has been downloaded over 10,000 times in 126 countries. Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Kanato Bo writes:
"Wonderful - Fantastic and helpful! Hesperian should make more of these. I work in rural communities in Guatemala and feel much more prepared with this simple guide!"
We have already received a number of requests to adapt the content for different platforms and languages, a demonstration of need for this type of product.
Our projected 1-3 year impact is to support thousands of women, midwives, and health workers to have, and ensure, safer pregnancies and births, and to help shift the field of mHealth toward ownership and leadership by communities. In the next several years, mobile phones will only become more ubiquitous. Mobile phones have the potential to be incredibly powerful tools for women's health and empowerment, but only if women have a chance to define how we want them to be used – what kinds of information, in what formats, will be most useful to us.
App is adapted for one additional platform (on a lower end phone) to expand reach.
Identify a partner for adaptation
Work with partner on coding and additional field-testing as necessary
Distribute app (in all formats) widely
App is translated and field-tested in 3 additional languages; testing has identified improvements and topics for future apps.
Identify partners for translation and field testing
Translate and field test
Analyze results from field testing to improve app, explore new distribution channels, and identify topics for future work
Our main technical partner in this work has been UnaMesa Association. In addition, hundreds of partners from around the world work with us to develop, update, distribute, translate, and adapt our health guides – we could not do what we do without them. Together we work to make health for all a reality.
We are looking for technical partners, and are eager to offer our expertise in empowering health materials development.