Can health promotion videos ‘go viral’? A non-randomised, controlled, before-and-after pilot study to measure the spread and impact of local language mobile videos in Burkina Faso

ABSTRACT

Background: Mobile phones present a new health communications opportunity but use of mobile videos warrants more exploration. Our study tested a new idea: to produce health promotion videos in languages for which films have never previously been produced to see if they were widely shared.

Objective: To investigate whether the novelty of films in local languages focusing on health messages would be shared ‘virally’ among the target population.

Methods: A non-randomised, controlled, before-and-after study was used to evaluate the reach and impact of the intervention. We gave short health promotion videos on memory cards to distributors in eight intervention villages. Ten control villages, where no video distribution took place were randomly selected. We conducted cluster-level difference-in-difference logistic regression to assess self-reported knowledge indicators. We calculated odds ratios for intervention relative to control at baseline and endline and p-values for the change in odds ratios.

Results: Seven hundred and eight mothers were interviewed across all villages at baseline and 728 different mothers and 726 men were interviewed in the same villages a year later in October 2015. At endline, 32% of women and 44% of men in the intervention arm had ever seen a film on a mobile phone in Lobiri, compared to 1% of women and 2% of men in the control arm. There was a significant increase in the odds of knowing about giving Orasel to a child with diarrhoea in the intervention area relative to the control area. Awareness of the need to take a child with fever or symptoms of pneumonia to a health centre increased in the intervention area, but not significantly.

Conclusions: Viral sharing of films on mobile phones has the potential to be an effective health promotion tool for communities whose languages are not served by existing mass media channels.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile phones
• videos
• mass media
• child health
• rural

Responsible Editor Peter Byass, Umeå University, Sweden

Responsible Editor Peter Byass, Umeå University, Sweden

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for financing the pilot study, and to all our participants for sharing their time and input with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics and consent

Potential participants were given full information about the study and were required to provide written consent prior to completing the questionnaire. Ethical approval to conduct this research study was obtained from the Ethics Committee for Health Research in the Burkina Faso Ministry of Health.

Paper context

Mass media has been shown to be effective in changing health behaviours. Yet traditional mass media channels do not reach some rural or remote areas. Mobile phones present a new opportunity. This study suggests that producing health video content in local languages resulted in viral sharing of films on mobile phones and has the potential to be an effective health promotion tool for communities whose languages are not served by the existing mass media channels.

Additional information

Funding

This pilot study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Tessa Swigart

PR, ML, RH, and JM conceived of the project; PR, ML, and JM developed the protocol and supervised field work. MB, RL, and SS conducted the field work. KL conducted the majority of the analysis, along with TS and input from JH. TS drafted the manuscript with input from JH, JM, and RH. All authors contributed to the interpretation of findings and approved the final version.